BOOKS  BY  GEORGE  W.  CABLE 

PUBLISHED    BY    CHARLES     SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Gideon's  Band.  Illustrated.  12mo  net  $1.35 

Posson  Jone'  and  Pere  Raphael. 

Illustrated.    12mo net  $1.35 

Kincaid's    Battery.      Illustrated. 

12mo net  $1.35 

Bylow  Hill.    Illustrated.    12mo    .  net  $1.25 

The  Cavalier.    Illustrated    .    .    .  net  $1.35 

John  March,  Southerner.    12mo  net  $1.35 

Bonaventure.     12mo net  $1.35 

Dr.  Sevier.     12mo net  $1.35 

The  Qrandissimes.     12mo       .     .  net  $1.35 

THE  SAME.    Illustrated.  Crown 

8vo net  $2.50 

Old  Creole  Days.    12mo    .    .    .    .  net  $1.35 

THE  SAME.    Illustrated.    Crown 

8vo net  $2.50 

Strange  True  Stories  of  Louisiana. 

Illustrated.    12mo net  $1.35 

Strong  Hearts.     12mo net  $1.25 

The  Creoles  of  Louisiana.      Illus- 
trated.   Square  12mo       .    .    .  net  $2.50 

The  Silent  South.    12mo      .    .    .  net  $1.00 

The  Negro  Question.     12mo     .    .  net  $  .75 

Madame  Delphine net  $  .75 

The  Cable  Story  Book.  [Scribner 
Series  of  School  Reading.]  Illus- 
trated. 12mo net  $  .50 


The  Amateur  Garden.  Illustrated. 

12mo net   $1.50 


THE  AMATEUR  GARDEN 


"That  gardening  is  best  .  .  .  which  best  ministers  to  man's  felicity  with 
least  disturbance  of  nature's  freedom." 

This  is  my  study.  The  tree  in  the  middle  of  the  picture  is  Barrie's  elm.  I  once  lifted  it 
between  my  thumb  and  finger,  but  I  was  younger  and  the  tree  was  smaller.  The  dark  tree 
in  the  foreground  on  the  right  is  Felix  Adler's  hemlock.  [Page  82] 


THE  AMATEUR  GARDEN 


BY 
GEORGE  W.  CABLE 


ILLUSTRATED 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK   ::   ::   ::   MCMXIV 


Copyright,  1914,  by 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


Published  October,  1914 


iW*C5:S 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

MY  OWN  ACRE    .     .     .  •  , 1 

THE  AMERICAN  GARDEN 41 

WHERE  TO  PLANT  WHAT 79 

THE  COTTAGE  GARDENS  OF  NORTHAMPTON  .     .  1O7 

THE  PRIVATE  GARDEN'S  PUBLIC  VALUE      .     .     .  129 

THE  MIDWINTER  GARDENS  OF  NEW  ORLEANS  .  163 


382922 


ILLUS  TR ATI ON  S 


"  That  gardening  is  best  .  .  .  which  best  ministers  to  man's  felicity 

with  least  disturbance  of  nature's  freedom"  ....    Frontispiece 

Facing  Page 

"...  that  suddenly  falling  wooded  and  broken  ground  where  Mill 

River  loiters  through  Paradise" 6 


On  this  green  of  the  dryads  .  .  .  lies  My  Own  Acre " 


"The  beautiful  mill-pond  behind  its  high  dam  keeps  the  river  full 

back  to  the  rapids  just  above  My  Own  Acre  " 12 

"A  fountain  .  .  .  where  one,— or  two, — can  sit  and  hear  it  whisper  "        22 

"The  bringing  of  the  grove  out  on  the  lawn  and  the  pushing  of 
the  lawn  in  under  the  grove  was  one  of  the  early  tasks  of  My 
Own  Acre" 24 

"  Souvenir  trees  had  from  time  to  time  been  planted  on  the  lawn 

by  visiting  friends" 26 

"How  the  words  were  said  which  some  of  the  planters  spoke"      .       28 

" '  Where  are  you  going  ? '  says  the  eye.    '  Come  and  see,'  says  the 

roaming  line  " 34 

"  The  lane  is  open  to  view  from  end  to  end.    It  has  two  deep  bays 

on  the  side  nearest  the  lawn" 36 

"...  until  the  house  itself  seems  as  naturally  ...  to  grow  up  out 
of  the  garden  as  the  high  keynote  rises  at  the  end  of  a  lady's 
song" , 48 

vii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing  Page 

"Beautiful  results  may  be  got  on  smallest  grounds" 52 

"Muffle  your  architectural  angles  in  foliage  and  bloom"     ....  52 

Fences  masked  by  shrubbery        64 

After  the  first  frost  annual  plantings  cease  to  be  attractive  ....  72 

Shrubbery  versus  annuals 72 

Shrubs  are   better   than  annuals  for  masking  right  angles.    South 

Hall,  Williston  Seminary       74 

".  .  .  a  line  of  shrubbery  swinging  in  and  out  in  strong,  graceful 

undulations" 74 

"  However  enraptured  of  wild  nature  you  may  be,  you  do  and  must 

require  of  her  some  subserviency  about  your  own  dwelling"  84 


"Plant  it  where  it  will  best  enjoy  itself" 


"...  climaxes  to  be  got  by  superiority  of  stature,  by  darkness  and 
breadth  of  foliage  and  by  splendor  of  bloom  belong  at  its  far 
end" 94 

"  Some  clear  disclosure  of  charm  still  remote  may  beckon  and  lure  "        96 

"...  tall,  rectangular,  three-story  piles  .  .  .  full  of  windows  all  of 

one  size,  pigeon-house  style" 100 

"You  can  make  gardening  a  concerted  public  movement"      ...     112 

"Plant  on  all  your  lot's  boundaries,  plant  out  the  foundation-lines 

of  all  its  buildings" 122 

"  Not  chiefly  to  reward  the  highest  art  in  gardening,  but  to  procure 

its  widest  and  most  general  dissemination" 122 

"  Having  wages  bigger  than  their  bodily  wants,  and  having  spiritual 

wants  numerous  and  elastic  enough  to  use  up  the  surplus"     .      138 

viii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing  Page 

"  One  such  competing:  garden  was  so  beautiful  last  year  that  stran- 
gers driving  by  stopped  and  asked  leave  to  dismount  and  enjoy 
a  nearer  view" 138 

"  Beauty  can  be  called  into  life  about  the  most  unpretentious  domi- 
cile"   148 

"Those  who  pay  no  one  to  dig,  plant  or  prune  for  them"      .    .     .      148 

"In  New  Orleans  the  home  is  bounded  by  its  fences,  not  by  its 

doors— so  they  clothe  them  with  shrubberies  and  vines"     .     .      174 

"The  lawn  .  .  .  lies  clean-breasted,  green-breasted,  from  one  shrub- 

and-flower-planted  side  to  the  other,  along  and  across  "...      174 

"  There  eight  distinct  encumbrances  narrow  the  sward.  ...  In  a  half- 
day's  work,  the  fair  scene  might  be  enhanced  in  lovely  dig- 
nity by  the  elimination  of  these  excesses" 176 

"The  rear  walk  .  .  .  follows  the  dwelling's  ground  contour  with 

business  precision — being  a  business  path" 178 

"Thus  may  he  wonderfully  extenuate,  even  .  .  .  where  it  does  not 

conceal,  the  house's  architectural  faults  " 180 

"...  a  lovely  stage  scene  without  a  hint  of  the  stage's  unreality "      182 

"  Back  of  the  building-line  the  fences  .  .  .  generally  more  than  head- 
high  .  .  .  are  sure  to  be  draped." 184 

"...  from  the  autumn  side  of  Christmas  to  the  summer  side  of 

Easter" 184 

"  The  sleeping  beauty  of  the  garden's  unlost  configuration  .  .  .  keep- 
ing a  winter's  share  of  its  feminine  grace  and  softness"  ...  186 

"  It  is  only  there  that  I  see  anything  so  stalwart  as  a  pine  or  so  rigid 

as  a  spruce" 192 


IX 


MY    OWN    ACRE 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

A  LIFELONG  habit  of  story-telling  has  much 
•*•  *-  to  do  with  the  production  of  these  pages. 

All  the  more  does  it  move  me  because  it  has 
always  included,  as  perhaps  it  does  in  most 
story-tellers,  a  keen  preference  for  true  stories, 
stories  of  actual  occurrence. 

A  flower-garden  trying  to  be  beautiful  is  a 
charming  instance  of  something  which  a  story- 
teller can  otherwise  only  dream  of.  For  such  a 
garden  is  itself  a  story,  one  which  actually  and 
naturally  occurs,  yet  occurs  under  its  master's 
guidance  and  control  and  with  artistic  effect. 

Yet  it  was  this  same  story-telling  bent  which 
long  held  me  back  while  from  time  to  time  I  gen- 
eralized on  gardening  and  on  gardens  other 
than  my  own.  A  well-designed  garden  is  not 
only  a  true  story  happening  artistically  but  it 
is  one  that  passes  through  a  new  revision  each 
year,  "with  the  former  translations  diligently 

3 


TRB    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

compared  and  revised."  Each  year  my  own 
acre  has  confessed  itself  so  full  of  mistransla- 
tions of  the  true  text  of  gardening,  has  promised, 
each  season,  so  much  fairer  a  show  in  its  next 
edition,  and  has  been  kept  so  prolongedly  busy 
teaching  and  reteaching  its  master  where  to 
plant  what,  while  as  to  money  outlays  compelled 
to  live  so  much  more  like  a  poet  than  like  a 
prince,  that  the  bent  for  story-telling  itself  could 
not  help  but  say  wait. 

Now,  however,  the  company  to  which  this 
chapter  logically  belongs  is  actually  showing  ex- 
cellent reasons  why  a  history  of  their  writer's 
own  acre  should  lead  them.  Let  me,  then, 
begin  by  explaining  that  the  small  city  of  North- 
ampton, Massachusetts,  where  I  have  lived  all 
the  latter  three-fifths  of  my  adult  years,  sits  on 
the  first  rise  of  ground  which  from  the  west  over- 
looks the  alluvial  meadows  of  the  Connecticut, 
nine  miles  above  South  Hadley  Falls.  Close  at 
its  back  a  small  stream,  Mill  River,  coming  out 
of  the  Hampshire  hills  on  its  way  to  the  Con- 
necticut, winds  through  a  strip  of  woods  so  fair 
as  to  have  been  named  —  from  a  much  earlier 

4 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

day  than  when  Jenny  Lind  called  it  so  —  "Para- 
dise." On  its  town  side  this  wooded  ground  a 
few  hundred  yards  wide  drops  suddenly  a  hun- 
dred feet  or  so  to  the  mill  stream  and  is  cut  into 
many  transverse  ravines. 

In  its  timber  growth,  conspicuous  by  their 
number,  tower  white-pines,  while  among  them 
stand  only  less  loftily  a  remarkable  variety  of 
forest  trees  imperfectly  listed  by  a  certain  hum- 
ble authority  as  "mostly  h-oak,  h-ellum,  and 
h-ash,  with  a  little  'ickory." 

Imperfectly  listed,  for  there  one  may  find  also 
the  birch  and  the  beech,  the  linden,  sycamore, 
chestnut,  poplar,  hemlock-spruce,  butternut,  and 
maple  overhanging  such  pleasant  undergrowths 
as  the  hornbeam  and  hop-hornbeam,  willows, 
black-cherry  and  choke-cherry,  dogwood  and 
other  cornels,  several  viburnums,  bush  maples 
of  two  or  three  kinds,  alder,  elder,  sumach, 
hazel,  witch-hazel,  the  shadblow  and  other  per- 
ennial, fair-blooming,  sweet-smelling  favorites, 
beneath  which  lies  a  leaf -mould  rife  with  ferns 
and  wild  flowers. 

From  its  business  quarter  the  town's  chief 

5 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

street  of  residence,  Elm  Street,  begins  a  gently 
winding  westerly  ascent  to  become  an  open  high- 
road from  one  to  another  of  the  several  farming 
and  manufacturing  villages  that  use  the  water- 
power  of  Mill  River.  But  while  it  is  still  a  street 
there  runs  from  it  southerly  at  a  right  angle  a 
straight  bit  of  avenue  some  three  hundred  yards 
long  —  an  exceptional  length  of  unbent  street  for 
Northampton.  This  short  avenue  ends  at  an- 
other, still  shorter,  lying  square  across  its  foot 
within  some  seventy  yards  of  that  suddenly  fall- 
ing wooded  and  broken  ground  where  Mill  River 
loiters  through  Paradise.  The  strip  of  land 
between  the  woods  and  this  last  street  is  taken 
up  by  half  a  dozen  dwellings  of  modest  dignity, 
whose  front  shade-trees,  being  on  the  southerly 
side,  have  been  placed  not  on  the  sidewalk's 
roadside  edge  but  on  the  side  next  the  dwellings 
and  close  within  their  line  of  private  ownership: 
red,  white  and  post-oaks  set  there  by  the  pres- 
ent writer  when  he  named  the  street  "Dryads' 
Green."  They  are  now  twenty-one  years  old 
and  give  a  good  shade  which  actually  falls  where 
it  is  wanted  —  upon  the  sidewalk. 

6 


"...  that  suddenly  falling  wooded  and  broken  ground  where  Mill  River 
loiters  through  Paradise." 

A  strong  wire  fence  (invisible  in  the  picture)  here  divides  the  grove  from  the  old  river  road. 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

On  this  green  of  the  dryads,  where  it  inter- 
cepts the  "avenue"  that  slips  over  from  the 
Elm  Street  trolley-cars,  lies,  such  as  it  is,  my 
own  acre;  house,  lawn,  shrubberies  and,  at  the 
rear,  in  the  edge  of  the  pines,  the  study.  Back 
there  by  the  study  —  which  sometimes  in  irony 
we  call  the  power-house  —  the  lawn  merges  into 
my  seven  other  acres,  in  Paradise.  Really  the 
whole  possession  is  a  much  humbler  one  than  I 
find  myself  able  to  make  it  appear  in  the  flatter- 
ing terms  of  land  measure.  Those  seven  acres 
of  Paradise  I  acquired  as  "waste  land."  Never- 
theless, if  I  were  selling  that  "waste,"  that 
"hole  in  the  ground,"  it  would  not  hurt  my 
conscience,  such  as  it  is,  to  declare  that  the  birds 
on  it  alone  are  worth  more  than  it  cost:  wood- 
thrushes  and  robins,  golden  orioles,  scarlet  tana- 
gers,  blackbirds,  bluebirds,  oven-birds,  cedar- 
birds,  veeries,  vireos,  song-sparrows,  flycatchers, 
kinglets,  the  flicker,  the  cuckoo,  the  nuthatch, 
the  chickadee  and  the  rose-breasted  grosbeak, 
not  to  mention  jays  or  kingfishers,  swallows, 
the  little  green  heron  or  that  cock  of  the  walk, 
the  red  squirrel. 

7 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

Speaking  of  walks,  it  was  with  them  —  and 
one  drive  —  in  this  grove,  that  I  made  my  first 
venture  toward  the  artistic  enhancement  of  my 
acre,  —  acre  this  time  in  the  old  sense  that 
ignores  feet  and  rods.  I  was  quite  willing  to 
make  it  a  matter  of  as  many  years  as  necessary 
when  pursued  as  play,  not  work,  on  the  least 
possible  money  outlay  and  having  for  its  end 
a  garden  of  joy,  not  of  care.  By  no  inborn  sa- 
gacity did  I  discover  this  to  be  the  true  first 
step,  but  by  the  trained  eye  of  an  honored  and 
dear  friend,  that  distinguished  engineer  and  fa- 
mous street  commissioner  of  New  York,  Colonel 
George  E.  Waring,  who  lost  his  life  in  the  sani- 
tary regeneration  of  Havana. 

"Contour  paths"  was  the  word  he  gave  me; 
paths  starting  from  the  top  of  the  steep  broken 
ground  and  bending  in  and  out  across  and 
around  its  ridges  and  ravines  at  a  uniform  de- 
cline of,  say,  six  inches  to  every  ten  feet,  until 
the  desired  terminus  is  reached  below;  much  as, 
in  its  larger  way,  a  railway  or  aqueduct  might, 
or  as  cattle  do  when  they  roam  in  the  hills. 
Thus,  by  the  slightest  possible  interference  with 

8 


.     £ 


pi 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

natural  conditions,  these  paths  were  given  a 
winding  course  every  step  of  which  was  pleas- 
ing because  justified  by  the  necessities  of  the 
case,  traversing  the  main  inequalities  of  the 
ground  with  the  ease  of  level  land  yet  without 
diminishing  its  superior  variety  and  charm. 
And  so  with  contour  paths  I  began  to  find,  right 
at  my  back  door  and  on  my  own  acre,  in  nerve- 
tired  hours,  an  outdoor  relaxation  which  I  could 
b6gin,  leave  off  and  resume  at  any  moment  and 
which  has  never  staled  on  me.  For  this  was 
the  genesis  of  all  I  have  learned  or  done  in 
gardening,  such  as  it  is. 

My  appliances  for  laying  out  the  grades  were 
simple  enough:  a  spirit-level,  a  stiff  ten-foot  rod 
with  an  eighteen-inch  leg  nailed  firmly  on  one 
end  of  it,  a  twelve-inch  leg  on  the  other,  a 
hatchet,  and  a  basket  of  short  stakes  with  which 
to  mark  the  points,  ten  feet  apart,  where  the 
longer  leg,  in  front  on  all  down  grades,  rested 
when  the  spirit-level,  strapped  on  the  rod, 
showed  the  rod  to  be  exactly  horizontal.  Trivial 
inequalities  of  surface  were  arbitrarily  cut  down 
or  built  up  and  covered  with  leaves  and  pine- 

9 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

straw  to  disguise  the  fact,  and  whenever  a  tree 
or  anything  worth  preserving  stood  in  the  way 
here  came  the  loaded  barrow  and  the  barrow- 
ist,  like  a  piece  of  artillery  sweeping  into  action, 
and  a  fill  undistinguishable  from  nature  soon 
brought  the  path  around  the  obstacle  on  what 
had  been  its  lower  side,  to  meander  on  at  its 
unvarying  rate  of  rise  or  fall  as  though  nothing 
—  except  the  trees  and  wild  flowers  —  had  hap- 
pened since  the  vast  freshets  of  the  post-glacial 
period  built  the  landscape.  I  made  the  drive 
first,  of  steeper  grade  than  the  paths;  but  every 
new  length  of  way  built,  whether  walk  or  road, 
made  the  next  easier  to  build,  by  making  easier 
going  for  the  artillery,  the  construction  train. 
Also  each  new  path  has  made  it  easier  to  bring 
up,  for  the  lawn  garden,  sand,  clay,  or  leaf -mould, 
or  for  hearth  consumption  all  the  wood  which 
the  grove's  natural  mortality  each  year  requires 
to  be  disposed  of.  There  is  a  superior  spiritual 
quality  in  the  warmth  of  a  fire  of  h-oak,  h-ash, 
and  even  h-ellum  gathered  from  your  own  acre, 
especially  if  the  acre  is  very  small  and  has  con- 
tour paths.  By  a  fire  of  my  own  acre's  "dead 

10 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

and  down"  I  write  these  lines.  I  never  buy 
cordwood. 

Only  half  the  grove  has  required  these  paths, 
the  other  half  being  down  on  the  flat  margin 
of  the  river,  traversed  by  a  cart-road  at  least 
half  a  century  old,  though  used  by  wheels  hardly 
twice  a  year;  but  in  the  three  acres  where  lie 
the  contour  paths  there  is  now  three-fifths  of  a 
mile  of  them,  not  a  rod  of  which  is  superfluous. 
And  then  I  have  two  examples  of  another  kind 
of  path:  paths  with  steps;  paths  which  for  good 
and  lawful  reasons  cannot  allow  you  time  to  go 
around  on  the  "five  per  cent"  grade  but  must 
cut  across,  taking  a  single  ravine  lengthwise,  to 
visit  its  three  fish-pools. 

These  steps,  and  two  short  retaining  walls 
elsewhere  in  the  grove,  are  made  of  the  field 
stones  of  the  region,  uncut.  All  are  laid  "dry" 
like  the  ordinary  stone  fences  of  New  England 
farms,  and  the  walls  are  built  with  a  smart 
inward  batter  so  that  the  winter  frosts  may 
heave  them  year  after  year,  heave  and  leave 
but  not  tumble  them  down.  I  got  that  idea 
from  a  book.  Everything  worth  while  on  my 

11 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

acre  is  from  books  except  what  two  or  three  pro- 
fessional friends  have  from  time  to  time  dropped 
into  my  hungry  ear.  Both  my  ears  have  good 
appetites  —  for  garden  lore. 

About  half  a  mile  from  me,  down  Mill  River, 
stands  the  factory  of  a  prized  friend  who  more 
than  any  other  man  helps  by  personal  daily  care 
to  promote  Northampton's  "People's  Institute," 
of  whose  home-garden  work  I  have  much  to 
say  in  the  chapters  that  follow  this  one.  For 
forty  years  or  more  this  factory  has  been  known 
far  and  wide  as  the  "Hoe  Shop"  because  it 
makes  shovels.  It  has  never  made  hoes.  It 
uses  water-power,  and  the  beautiful  mill-pond 
behind  its  high  dam  keeps  the  river  full  back  to 
the  rapids  just  above  my  own  acre.  In  winter 
this  is  the  favorite  skating-pond  of  the  town 
and  of  Smith  College.  In  the  greener  seasons 
of  college  terms  the  girls  constantly  pass  up- 
stream and  down  in  their  pretty  rowboats  and 
canoes,  making  a  charming  effect  as  seen  from 
my  lawn's  rear  edge  at  the  head  of  the  pine 
and  oak  shaded  ravine  whose  fish-pools  are  gay 
by  turns  with  elder,  wild  sunflower,  sumach, 
iris,  water-lilies,  and  forget-me-not. 


"The  beautiful  mill-pond  behind  its  high  dam  keeps  the  river  full  back  to 
the  rapids  just  above  My  Own  Acre." 

This  is  the  "Hoe  Shop."     The  tower  was  ruined  by  fire  many  years  ago,  and  because  of  its 
unsafely  is  being  taken  down  at  the  present  writing. 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

This  ravine,  the  middle  one  of  the  grove's 
three,  is  about  a  hundred  feet  wide.  When  I 
first  began  to  venture  the  human  touch  in  it,  it 
afforded  no  open  spot  level  enough  to  hold  a 
camp-stool.  From  the  lawn  above  to  the  river 
road  below,  the  distance  is  three  hundred  and 
thirty  feet,  and  the  fall,  of  fifty-five  feet,  is 
mostly  at  the  upper  end,  which  is  therefore  too 
steep,  as  well  as  too  full  of  varied  undergrowth, 
for  any  going  but  climbing.  In  the  next  ravine 
on  its  left  there  was  a  clear,  cold  spring  and  in 
the  one  on  its  right  ran  a  natural  rivulet  that 
trickled  even  in  August;  but  this  middle  ravine 
was  dry  or  merely  moist. 

Here  let  me  say  to  any  who  would  try  an  ama- 
teur landscape  art  on  their  own  acre  at  the  edge 
of  a  growing  town,  that  the  town's  growth  tends 
steadily  to  diminish  the  amount  of  their  land- 
scape's natural  water  supply  by  catching  on 
street  pavements  and  scores  and  hundreds  of 
roofs,  lawns  and  walks,  and  carrying  away  in 
sewers,  the  rain  and  melting  snows  which  for 
ages  filtered  slowly  through  the  soil.  Small 
wonder,  I  think,  that,  when  in  the  square 
quarter-mile  between  my  acre  and  Elm  Street 

13 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

fifty-three  dwellings  and  three  short  streets  took 
the  place  of  an  old  farm,  my  grove,  by  sheer 
water  famine,  lost  several  of  its  giant  pines. 
Wonder  to  me  is  that  the  harm  seems  at  length 
to  have  ceased. 

But  about  that  ravine:  one  day  the  nature  of 
its  growth  and  soil,  especially  its  alders,  elders, 
and  willows  and  a  show  of  clay  and  gravel, 
forced  on  my  notice  the  likelihood  that  here, 
too,  had  once  been  a  spring,  if  no  more.  I 
scratched  at  its  head  with  a  stick  and  out  came 
an  imprisoned  rill  like  a  recollected  word  from 
the  scratched  head  of  a  schoolboy.  Happily  the 
spot  was  just  at  the  bottom  of  the  impassably 
steep  fall  of  ground  next  the  edge  of  the  lawn 
and  was  almost  in  the  centre  of  those  four 
acres  —  one  of  sward,  three  of  woods  —  which  I 
proposed  to  hold  under  more  or  less  discipline, 
leaving  the  rest  —  a  wooded  strip  running  up  the 
river  shore  —  wholly  wild,  as  college  girls,  for 
example,  would  count  wildness.  In  both  parts 
the  wealth  of  foliage  on  timber  and  underbrush 
almost  everywhere  shut  the  river  out  of  view 
from  the  lawn  and  kept  the  eye  restless  for  a 

14 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

glint,  if  no  more,  of  water.  And  so  there  I 
thought  at  once  to  give  myself  what  I  had  all 
my  life  most  absurdly  wished  for,  a  fish-pool. 
I  had  never  been  able  to  look  upon  an  aquarium 
and  keep  the  tenth  Commandment.  I  had  never 
caught  a  fish  without  wanting  to  take  it  home 
and  legally  adopt  it  into  the  family  —  a  tendency 
which  once  led  my  son  to  say,  "Yes,  he  would 
be  pleased  to  go  fishing  with  me  if  I  would  only 
fish  in  a  sportsmanlike  manner."  What  a  beau- 
tifully marked  fish  is  the  sun-perch !  Once, 
in  boyhood,  I  kept  six  of  those  "pumpkin- 
seed"  in  a  cistern,  and  my  smile  has  never  been 
the  same  since  I  lost  them  —  one  of  my  war 
losses. 

I  resolved  to  impound  the  waters  of  my  spring 
in  the  ravine  and  keep  fish  at  last  —  without 
salt  —  to  my  heart's  content.  Yet  I  remem- 
bered certain  restraining  precepts:  first,  that 
law  of  art  which  condemns  incongruity  —  re- 
quires everything  to  be  in  keeping  with  its  nat- 
ural surroundings  —  and  which  therefore,  for  one 
thing,  makes  an  American  garden  the  best  pos- 
sible sort  of  garden  to  have  in  America;  second, 

15 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

that  twin  art  law,  against  inutility,  which  de- 
mands that  everything  in  an  artistic  scheme 
serve  the  use  it  pretends  to  serve;  third,  a  pre- 
cept of  Colonel  Waring's:  "Don't  fool  with  run- 
ning water  if  you  haven't  money  to  fool  away"; 
and,  fourth,  that  best  of  all  gardening  rules  — 
look  before  you  leap. 

However,  on  second  thought,  and  tenth,  and 
twentieth,  one  thought  a  day  for  twenty  days,  I 
found  that  if  water  was  to  be  impounded  any- 
where on  my  acre  here  was  the  strategic  point. 
Down  this  ravine,  as  I  have  said,  was  the  lawn's 
one  good  glimpse  of  the  river,  and  a  kindred 
gleam  intervening  would  tend,  in  effect,  to  draw 
those  farther  waters  in  under  the  trees  and  into 
the  picture. 

Such  relationships  are  very  rewarding  to  find 
to  whoever  would  garden  well.  Hence  this  men- 
tion. One's  garden  has  to  do  with  whatever  is 
in  sight  from  it,  fair  or  otherwise,  and  it  is  as 
feasible  and  important  to  plant  in  the  fair  as  to 
plant  out  the  otherwise.  Also,  in  making  my 
grove  paths,  I  had  noticed  that  to  cross  this  ra- 
vine where  at  one  or  two  places  in  its  upper  half 

16 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

a  contour  grade  would  have  been  pettily  cir- 
cuitous and  uninteresting,  and  to  cross  it  com- 
fortably, there  should  be  either  a  bridge  or  a 
dam;  and  a  dam  with  water  behind  it  seemed 
pleasanter  every  way  —  showed  less  incongruity 
and  less  inutility  -  -  than  a  bridge  with  no  water 
under  it. 

As  to  "fooling  with  running  water,"  the  mere 
trickle  here  in  question  had  to  be  dragged  out 
of  its  cradle  to  make  it  run  at  all.  It  remained 
for  me  to  find  out  by  experience  that  even  that 
weakling,  imprisoned  and  grown  to  a  pool, 
though  of  only  three  hundred  square  feet  in  sur- 
face, when  aided  and  abetted  by  New  England 
frosts  and  exposed  on  a  southern  slope  to  winter 
noonday  suns,  could  give  its  amateur  captor  as 
much  trouble  —  proportionately  —  as  any  He- 
brew babe  drawn  from  the  bulrushes  of  the  Nile 
is  said  to  have  given  his. 

Now  if  there  is  any  value  in  recording  these 
experiences  it  can  be  only  in  the  art  principles 
they  reveal.  To  me  in  the  present  small  instance 
the  principle  illustrated  was  that  of  the  true 
profile  line  for  ascent  or  descent  in  a  garden. 

17 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

You  may  go  into  any  American  town  where 
there  is  any  inequality  of  ground  and  in  half 
an  hour  find  a  hundred  or  two  private  lawns 
graded  —  from  the  house  to  each  boundary  line 
—  on  a  single  falling  curve,  or,  in  plain  English, 
a  hump.  The  best  reason  why  this  curve  is  not 
artistic,  not  pleasing,  but  stupid,  is  that  it  is  not 
natural  and  gains  nothing  by  being  unnatural. 
All  gardening  is  a  certain  conquest  of  Nature, 
and  even  when  "formal"  should  interfere  with 
her  own  manner  and  custom  as  slightly  as  is 
required  by  the  necessities  of  the  case  —  the 
needs  of  that  particular  spot's  human  use  and 
joy.  The  right  profile  and  surface  for  a  lawn  of 
falling  grade,  the  surface  which  will  permanently 
best  beguile  both  eye  and  foot,  should  follow  a 
double  curve,  an  ogee  line.  For,  more  or  less 
emphasized,  that  is  Nature's  line  in  all  her 
affable  moods  on  land  or  water:  a  descent  or  as- 
cent beginning  gradually,  increasing  rapidly,  and 
concluding  gently.  We  see  it  in  the  face  of  any 
smooth  knoll  or  billow.  I  believe  the  artists 
impute  to  Praxiteles  a  certain  ownership  in  this 
double  curve.  It  is  a  living  line;  it  suggests 

18 


i 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

Nature  conscious  and  astir  as  no  single  curve 
or  straight  line  can. 

I  admit  that  even  among  amateurs  this  is 
rather  small  talk,  but  it  brings  me  to  this  point: 
in  the  passage  of  water  down  a  ravine  of  its  own 
making,  this  line  of  Nature  astir  may  repeat 
itself  again  and  again  but  is  commonly  too  in- 
affable,  abrupt,  angular,  to  suggest  the  ogee. 
In  that  middle  part  of  it  where  the  descent  is 
swift  it  may  be  more  or  less  of  a  plunge,  and 
after  the  plunge  the  water  is  likely  to  pause  on 
the  third  turn,  in  a  natural  pool,  before  resuming 
its  triple  action  again.  And  so,  in  my  ravine, 
some  seasons  later,  I  ventured  to  detain  the  over- 
flow of  my  first  pool  on  a  second  and  a  third 
lingering  place,  augmenting  the  water  supply  by 
new  springs  developed  in  the  bottoms  of  the 
new  pools.  The  second  pool  has  a  surface  of  a 
thousand  square  feet,  the  third  spans  nineteen 
hundred,  and  there  are  fish  in  all  three,  hatched 
there — "pumpkin -seed"  included, but  also  trout 
—  among  spontaneous  bulrushes,  pond-lilies, 
flags,  and  dainty  water-weeds;  and  sometimes  at 
night,  when  the  reflected  glory  of  a  ten-o'clock 

19 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

full  moon  shines  up  from  it  to  the  stone  exedra 
on  the  lawn,  I  seem  to  have  taken  my  Praxitelean 
curves  so  directly  from  Nature  that  she  thinks 
she  took  them  herself  from  me  and  thanks  me 
for  the  suggestion. 

Please  observe  that  of  great  gardens,  or  of 
costly  gardens  whether  great  or  only  costly,  we 
here  say  nothing.  Our  theme  is  such  a  garden 
as  a  householder  may  himself  make  and  keep 
or  for  which,  at  most,  he  needs  professional 
advice  only  in  its  first  planning,  and  for  its 
upkeep  one  gardener,  with  one  occasional  helper 
in  pressing  seasons  or  in  constructional  work. 

Constructional  work.  Dams,  for  example.  In 
two  of  my  dams  I  built  cores  of  concrete  and 
thus  made  acquaintance  with  that  interesting 
material.  Later  I  pressed  the  acquaintanceship, 
made  garden  and  grove  seats,  a  table  or  two,  a 
very  modest  fountain  for  a  single  jet  of  water  in 
my  highest,  smallest  fish-pool,  and  even  a  flight 
of  steps  with  a  pair  of  gaine-shaped  pedestals  - 
suggested  by  a  sculptor  friend  —  at  their  top. 
The  exedra  I  mentioned  just  now  is  of  concrete. 
The  stuff  is  a  temptation  to  be  wary  of.  The 

20 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

ordinary  gray  sort  —  I  have  touched  no  other 

—  is  a  humble  medium,  and  pretentious  designs 
in  humble  materials  are  one  of  the  worst,  and 
oldest,  of  garden  incongruities.     In  my  ventures 
with  concrete  I  have  studied  for  grace  in  form 
but  grace  subordinated  to  stability,  and  have 
shunned  embellishment.     Embellishment  for  its 
own  sake    is  the    easiest    and  commonest  sin 
against  good  art  wherever  art  becomes  self-con- 
scious.    It  is  having  a  riotous  time  just  now  in 
concrete.     I  have  rarely  seen  a  commercial  con- 
crete garden-seat  which  was  not  more  ornate 
than  I  should  want  it  for  my  own  acre.     I  hap- 
pen to  have  two  or  three  articles  in  my  garden 
which   are   a   trifle   elaborate  but  they  are  of 
terra-cotta,  are  not  home-made  and  would  be 
plainer  could  I  have  found  them  so. 

A  garden  needs  furniture  only  less  than  a 
house,  and  concrete  is  a  boon  to  "natural"  gar- 
dening, being  inexpensive,  rustic,  and  imperish- 
able. I  fancy  a  chief  reason  why  there  is  such 
inconsiderate  dearth  of  seats  and  steps  in  our 
American  amateur  gardens  is  the  old  fashion 

—  so  well  got  rid  of  at  any  cost  —  of  rustic 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

cedar  and  hickory  stairs  and  benches.  "Have 
none  of  them,"  was  Colonel  Waring's  injunc- 
tion; "they  are  forever  out  of  repair." 

But  I  fear  another  reason  is  that  so  often  our 
gardens  are  neither  for  private  ease  nor  social 
joy,  but  for  public  display  and  are  planned 
mainly  for  street  exhibition.  That  is  the  way 
we  commonly  treat  garden  fountains!  We 
make  a  smug  show  of  unfenced,  unhedged,  uni- 
versal hospitality  across  a  sidewalk  boundary 
which  nevertheless  we  hold  inviolate  —  some- 
times by  means  of  a  painted  sign  or  gas-pipe  - 
and  never  say  "Have  a  seat"  to  the  dearest 
friend  in  any  secluded  nook  of  our  shrubberies, 
if  there  is  such  a  nook.  How  many  of  us  know 
a  fountain  beside  an  embowered  seat  where  one, 
-  or  two,  —  with  or  without  the  book  of  verses, 
can  sit  and  hear  it  whisper  or  watch  the  moon- 
light cover  it  with  silent  kisses  ?  In  my  limited 
experience  I  have  known  of  but  two.  One  is 
by  the  once  favorite  thought-promoting  sum- 
mer seat  of  Augustus  Saint-Gaudens  on  his  own 
home  acre  in  Vermont;  the  other  I  need  not 
particularize  further  than  to  say  that  it  is  one 


"A  fountain  .  .  .  where  one, — or  two, — can  sit  and  hear  it  whisper." 

The  ravine  of  the  three  fish  pools.     There  is  a  drop  of  thirty  feet  between  the  upper  and  the 

lowermost  pool. 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

of  the  things  which  interlock  and  unify  a  certain 
garden  and  grove. 

The  bringing  of  the  grove  out  on  the  lawn  and 
the  pushing  of  the  lawn  in  under  the  grove  was 
one  of  the  early  tasks  of  my  own  acre.  When 
the  house  was  built  its  lot  and  others  backed  up 
to  a  hard,  straight  rear  line  where  the  old  field 
had  halted  at  its  fence  and  where  the  woods 
began  on  ground  that  fell  to  the  river  at  an  angle 
of  from  forty  to  fifty  degrees.  Here  my  gifted 
friend  and  adviser  gave  me  a  precept  got  from 
his  earlier  gifted  friend  and  adviser,  Frederick 
Law  Olmsted:  that  passing  from  any  part  of  a 
pleasure-ground  to  any  part  next  it  should  be 
entirely  safe  and  easy  or  else  impossible.  By 
the  application  of  this  maxim  I  brought  my  lawn 
and  grove  together  in  one  of  the  happiest  of  mar- 
riages. For  I  proceeded,  by  filling  with  earth 
(and  furnace  ashes),  to  carry  the  lawn  in,  prac- 
tically level,  beyond  the  old  fence  line  and  un- 
der the  chestnuts  and  pines  sometimes  six  feet, 
sometimes  twelve,  until  the  difficult  and  unsafe 
forty  or  fifty  degrees  of  abrupt  fall  were  changed 
to  an  impassable  sixty  and  seventy  degrees,  and 

23 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

every  one's  instinctive  choice  of  way  was  the 
contour  paths. 

At  the  same  time  this  has  preserved,  and  even 
enhanced,  the  place's  wildness,  especially  the 
wild  flowers  and  the  low-nesting  birds.  Some- 
times a  few  yards  of  retaining-wall,  never  ce- 
mented, always  laid  up  dry  and  with  a  strong 
inward  batter,  had  to  be  put  in  to  avoid  smoth- 
ering the  roots  of  some  great  tree;  for,  as  every- 
body knows  and  nearly  everybody  forgets,  roots, 
like  fishes,  must  have  air.  In  one  place,  across 
the  filled  head  of  a  ravine,  the  wall,  though 
but  a  scant  yard  high,  is  fifty  feet  long,  and 
there  is  another  place  where  there  should  be  one 
like  it.  In  this  work  no  tree  was  sacrificed  save 
one  noble  oak  done  to  death  by  a  youth  who 
knew  but  forgot  that  roots  must  have  air. 

Not  to  make  the  work  expensive  it  was  pur- 
sued slowly,  through  many  successive  seasons; 
yet  before  even  its  easy,  first  half  was  done  the 
lawn  was  in  under  the  grove  on  an  apparently 
natural,  irregular  crest  line.  Moreover  the 
grove  was  out  on  the  lawn  with  an  even  more 
natural  haphazard  bordering  line;  for  another 

24 


"The  bringing  of  the  grove  out  on  the  lawn  and  the  pushing  of  the  lawn  in 
under  the  grove  was  one  of  the  early  tasks  of  My  Own  Acre." 

At  the  point  where  the  party  is  drinking  tea  (the  site  of  the  Indian  mound)  the  overlap  of 
grove  and  lawn  is  eighty-five  feet  across  the  old  fence  line  that  once  sharply  divided  them. 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

operation  had  been  carried  on  meantime.  Trees, 
souvenir  trees,  had  from  time  to  time  been 
planted  on  the  lawn  by  visiting  friends.  Most 
of  them  are  set  close  enough  to  the  grove  to 
become  a  part  of  it,  standing  in  a  careful  irregu- 
larity which  has  already  obliterated,  without  mo- 
lesting, the  tree  line  of  the  ancient  fence. 

Young  senators  among  their  seniors,  they  still 
have  much  growth  to  make  before  they  can  enter 
into  their  full  forest  dignity,  yet  Henry  Ward 
Beecher's  elm  is  nearly  two  feet  through  and  has 
a  spread  of  fifty;  Max  O'Rell's  white-ash  is  a 
foot  in  diameter  and  fifty  feet  high;  Edward 
Atkinson's  is  something  more,  and  Felix  Adler's 
hemlock-spruce,  the  maple  of  Anthony  Hope 
Hawkins,  L.  Clark  Seelye's  English  ash,  Henry 
van  Dyke's  white-ash,  Sol  Smith  Russell's  lin- 
den, and  Hamilton  Wright  Mabie's  horse-chest- 
nut are  all  about  thirty-five  feet  high  and  cast  a 
goodly  shade.  Sir  James  M.  Barrie's  elm  —  his 
and  Sir  William  Robertson  Nicoll's,  who  planted 
it  with  him  later  than  the  plantings  aforemen- 
tioned —  has,  by  some  virtue  in  the  soil  or  in  its 
own  energies,  reached  a  height  of  nearly  sixty- 

25 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

five  feet  and  a  diameter  of  sixteen  inches. 
Other  souvenirs  are  a  horse-chestnut  planted  by 
Minnie  Maddern  Fiske,  a  ginkgo  by  Alice  Free- 
man Palmer,  a  beech  by  Paul  van  Dyke,  a  horse- 
chestnut  by  Anna  Hempstead  Branch,  another 
by  Sir  Sidney  Lee,  yet  another  by  Mary  E. 
Burt,  a  catalpa  by  Madelaine  Wynne,  a  Colo- 
rado blue  spruce  —  fitly  placed  after  much  labor 
of  mind  —  by  Sir  Moses  Ezekiel,  and  a  Kentucky 
coffee-tree  by  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  and  Jennette 
Lee,  of  our  own  town.  Among  these  should  also 
stand  the  maple  of  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  but 
it  was  killed  in  its  second  winter  by  an  unde- 
tected mouse  at  its  roots.  Except  Sir  Moses, 
all  the  knights  here  named  received  the  accolade 
after  their  tree  plantings,  but  I  draw  no  moral. 
Would  it  were  practicable  to  transmit  to  those 
who  may  know  these  trees  in  later  days  the 
scenes  of  their  setting  out  and  to  tell  just  how 
the  words  were  said  which  some  of  the  planters 
spoke.  Mr.  Beecher,  lover  of  young  trees  and 
young  children,  straightened  up  after  pressing 
the  soil  about  the  roots  with  hands  as  well  as 
feet  and  said:  "I  cannot  wish  you  to  live  as 


"  Souvenir  trees  had  from  time  to  time  been  planted  on  the  lawn  by  visiting 

friends." 

The  Beecher  elm,  first  of  the  souvenir  trees. 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

long  as  this  tree,  but  may  your  children's  chil- 
dren and  their  children  sit  under  its  shade." 
Said  Felix  Adler  to  his  hemlock-spruce,  "  Vivat, 
crescat,  floreat";  and  a  sentiment  much  like  it 
was  implied  in  Sol  Smith  Russell's  words  to  the 
grove's  master  as  they  finished  putting  in  his 
linden  together  —  for  he  was  just  then  propos- 
ing to  play  Rip  Van  Winkle,  which  Joseph  Jef- 
ferson had  finally  decided  to  produce  no  more: 
"Here's  to  your  healt',  undt  der  healt'  of  all 
your  family;  may  you  lif  long  undt  brosper." 

We  —  the  first  person  singular  grows  tiresome 
—  we  might  have  now,  on  our  acre,  a  tree 
planted  by  Joseph  Jefferson  had  we  thought  in 
time  to  be  provided  with  a  sapling,  growing,  in  a 
tub.  Have  your  prospective  souvenir  tree  al- 
ready tubbed  and  waiting.  This  idea  I  got  from 
Andrew  Carnegie,  with  whom  I  had  the  honor 
to  plant  an  oak  at  Skibo  Castle  and  from  whom 
I,  like  so  many  others,  have  had  other  things 
almost  as  good  as  ideas.  Have  your  prospective 
souvenir  tree  tubbed  and  the  tub  sunk  in  the 
ground,  of  course,  to  its  rim.  Then  the  dear 
friend  can  plant  it  at  any  time  that  he  may 

27 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

chance  along  between  March  and  December. 
But  let  no  souvenir  tree,  however  planted,  be 
treated,  after  planting,  as  other  than  a  living 
thing  if  you  would  be  just  to  it,  to  your  friend, 
or  to  yourself.  Cultivate  it;  coax  it  on;  and  it 
will  grow  two  or  three  or  four  times  as  fast  as  if 
left  to  fight  its  daily  battle  for  life  unaided.  And 
do  not  forbear  to  plant  trees  because  they  grow 
so  slowly.  They  need  not.  They  do  not.  With 
a  little  attention  they  grow  so  swiftly !  Before 
you  know  it  you  are  sitting  in  their  shade.  Be- 
sides Sir  Arthur's  maple  the  only  souvenir  tree 
we  have  lost  was  a  tulip-tree  planted  by  my  friend 
of  half  a  lifetime,  the  late  Franklin  H.  Head. 

So  much  for  my  grove.  I  write  of  it  not  in 
self-complacency.  My  many  blunders,  some  of 
them  yet  to  be  made,  are  a  good  insurance 
against  that.  I  write  because  of  the  countless 
acres  as  good  as  mine,  in  this  great,  dear  Amer- 
ica, which  might  now  be  giving  their  owners  all 
the  healthful  pastime,  private  solace,  or  solitary 
or  social  delights  which  this  one  yields,  yet  which 
are  only  "waste  lands"  or  "holes  in  the  ground" 
because  unavailable  for  house  lots  or  tillage. 

28 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

And  now  as  to  the  single  acre  by  measure,  of 
lawn,  shrubs,  and  plants,  close  around  my  house; 
for  the  reason  that  it  was  and  is  my  school  of 
gardening.  There  was  no  garden  here  —  I  write 
this  in  the  midst  of  it  —  when  I  began.  Ten 
steps  from  where  I  sit  there  had  been  a  small 
Indian  mound  which  some  one  had  carefully 
excavated.  I  found  stone  arrow  chips  on  the 
spot,  and  one  whole  arrow-head.  So  here  no 
one  else's  earlier  skill  was  in  evidence  to  point 
my  course  or  impede  it.  This  was  my  clean 
new  slate  and  at  that  time  I  had  never  "done  a 
sum"  in  gardening  and  got  anything  like  a  right 
answer. 

It  is  emphatically  an  amateur  garden  and  a 
book  garden :  a  garden  which  to  me,  as  to  most  of 
us,  would  have  been  impossible  in  any  but  these 
days  when  the  whole  art  of  gardening  has  been 
printed  in  books  and  no  amateur  is  excusable  for 
trying  to  garden  without  reading  them, -or  for 
saying  after  having  read  them  that  he  has 
planned  and  worked  without  professional  advice. 
The  books  are  the  professional  advice,  with  few 
drawbacks  and  with  the  great  advantage  that 

29 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

they  are  ours  truly  and  do  not  even  have  to  be 
"phoned."  I  should  rather  have  in  my  library 
my  Bailey's  "American  Cyclopedia  of  Horticul- 
ture," than  any  two  garden  periodicals  once  a 
month.  These,  too,  I  value,  but,  for  me,  they  are 
over-apt  to  carry  too  much  deckload  of  the  ad- 
vice and  gentle  vaun tings  of  other  amateurs. 
I  have  an  amateur's  abhorrence  of  amateurs ! 
The  Cyclopedia  knows,  and  will  always  send  me 
to  the  right  books  if  it  cannot  thresh  a  matter  out 
with  me  itself.  Before  Bailey  my  fount  of  knowl- 
edge was  Mr.  E.  J.  Canning,  late  of  Smith  Col- 
lege Botanic  Gardens;  a  spring  still  far  from  dry. 

As  the  books  enjoin,  I  began  my  book-garden- 
ing with  a  plan  on  paper;  not  the  elaborate  thing 
one  pays  for  when  he  can  give  his  garden  more 
money  than  time,  but  a  light  sketch,  a  mere 
fundamental  suggestion.  This  came  profession- 
ally from  a  landscape-architect,  Miss  Frances 
Bullard,  of  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  who  had 
just  finished  plotting  the  grounds  of  my  neigh- 
bor, the  college. 

I  tell  of  my  own  garden  for  another  reason: 
that  it  shows,  I  think,  how  much  can  be  done 

30 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

with  how  little,  if  for  the  doing  you  take  time 
instead  of  money.  All  things  come  to  the  gar- 
den that  knows  how  to  wait.  Mine  has  acquired 
at  leisure  a  group  of  effects  which  would  have 
cost  from  ten  to  twenty  times  as  much  if  got 
in  a  hurry.  Garden  for  ten-year  results  and  get 
them  for  next  to  nothing,  and  at  the  same  time 
you  may  quicken  speed  whenever  your  exchequer 
smiles  broadly  enough.  Of  course  this  argu- 
ment is  chiefly  for  those  who  have  the  time 
and  not  the  money;  for  by  time  we  mean  play 
time,  time  which  is  money  lost  if  you  don't 
play.  The  garden  that  gives  the  most  joy,  "  Joy- 
ous Gard,"  as  Sir  Launcelot  named  his,  is  not  to 
be  bought,  like  a  Circassian  slave;  it  must  be 
brought  up,  like  a  daughter.  How  much  of  life 
they  can  miss  who  can  buy  whatever  they  want 
whenever  they  want  it ! 

But  I  tell  first  of  my  own  garden  also  because 
I  believe  it  summarizes  to  the  eye  a  number  of 
primary  book-rules,  authoritative  "don'ts,"  by 
the  observance  of  which  a  multitude  of  amateur 
gardeners  may  get  better  results  than  it  yet 
shows.  Nevertheless,  I  will  hardly  do  more  than 

31 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

note  a  few  exceptions  to  these  ground  rules, 
which  may  give  the  rules  a  more  convincing 
force.  First  of  all,  "don't"  let  any  of  your 
planting  cut  or  split  your  place  in  two.  How 
many  a  small  house-lot  lawn  we  see  split  down 
the  middle  by  a  row  of  ornamental  shrubs  or 
fruit-trees  which  might  as  easily  have  been  set 
within  a  few  feet  of  the  property  line,  whose 
rigidity,  moreover,  would  have  best  excused  the 
rigidity  of  the  planted  line.  But  such  glaring 
instances  aside,  there  are  many  subtler  ones 
quite  as  unfortunate;  "don't"  be  too  sure  you 
are  not  unwittingly  furnishing  one. 

"Don't"  destroy  the  openness  of  your  sward 
by  dotting  it  with  shrubs  or  pattern  flower-beds. 
To  this  rule  I  doubt  if  a  plausible  exception  could 
be  contrived.  It  is  so  sweeping  and  so  primary 
that  we  might  well  withhold  it  here  were  we 
not  seeking  to  state  its  artistic  reason  why. 
Which  is,  that  such  plantings  are  mere  eruptions 
of  individual  smartness,  without  dignity  and 
with  no  part  in  any  general  unity;  chirping  up 
like  pert  children  in  a  company  presumably  try- 
ing to  be  rational. 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

On  the  other  hand,  I  hope  my  acre,  despite  all 
its  unconscious  or  unconfessed  mistakes,  shows 
pleasantly  that  the  best  openness  of  a  lawn  is  not 
to  be  got  between  unclothed,  right-angled  and 
parallel  bounds.  The  more  its  verdure-clad 
borders  swing  in  and  out  the  longer  they  look, 
not  merely  because  they  are  longer  but  also 
because  they  interest  and  lure  the  eye.  "Where 
are  you  going?"  says  the  eye. 

"Come  and  see,"  says  the  roaming  line. 

"Don't"  plant  in  stiff  lines  except  in  close 
relation  to  architectural  or  legal  bounds.  A 
straight  horizontal  line  Nature  scarcely  knows 
save  in  her  rocks  and  on  a  vaster  scale  than  we 
here  have  to  do  with.  Yet  straight  lines  in  gar- 
dening are  often  good  and  fine  if  only  they  are 
lines  of  real  need.  Where,  when  and  in  what 
degree  it  is  good  to  subordinate  utility  to  beauty 
or  beauty  to  utility  depends  on  time,  place  and 
circumstance,  but  when  in  doubt  "don't"  pinch 
either  to  pet  the  other.  Oppression  is  never 
good  art.  Yet  "don't"  cry  war,  war,  where 
there  is  no  war.  A  true  beauty  and  a  needed 
utility  may  bristle  on  first  collision  but  they  soon 

33 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

make  friends.  Was  it  not  Ruskin  himself  who 
wanted  to  butt  the  railway-train  off  the  track 
and  paw  up  the  rails  —  something  like  that  ? 
But  even  between  them  and  the  landscape 
there  is  now  an  entente  cordiale.  I  have  seen 
the  hand  of  Joseph  Pennell  make  beautiful 
peace  with  billboards  and  telegraph-poles  and 
wires. 

The  railway  points  us  to  the  fact  that  along 
the  ground  Nature  is  as  innocent  of  parallel  lines, 
however  bent,  as  of  straight  ones,  and  that  in 
landscape-gardening  parallels  should  be  avoided 
unless  they  are  lines  of  utility.  "Don't"  lay 
parallel  lines,  either  straight  or  curved,  where 
Nature  would  not  and  utility  need  not.  Yet 
my  own  acre  has  taught  me  a  modification  of 
this  rule  so  marked  as  to  be  almost  an  excep- 
tion. On  each  side  of  me  next  my  nearest 
neighbor  I  have  a  turfed  alley  between  a  contin- 
uous bed  of  flowering  shrubs  and  plants  next  the 
division  line,  and  a  similar  bed  whose  meander- 
ings  border  my  lawn.  At  first  I  gave  these  two 
alleys  a  sinuous  course  in  correspondence  with 
the  windings  of  the  bed  bordering  the  lawn  - 

34 


ss 

i  P 


•II 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

for  they  were  purely  ways  of  pleasure  among 
the  flowers,  and  a  loitering  course  seemed  only 
reasonable.  But  sinuous  lines  proved  as  dis- 
appointing in  the  alleys  as  they  were  satisfying 
out  on  the  lawn,  and  by  and  by  I  saw  that 
whereas  the  bendings  of  the  open  lawn's  borders 
lured  and  rewarded  the  eye,  the  same  curves  in 
the  alleys  obstructed  and  baffled  it.  The  show 
of  floral  charms  was  piecemeal,  momentary  and 
therefore  trivial.  "Don't"  be  trivial ! 

But  a  cure  was  easy.  I  had  to  straighten  but 
one  side  of  each  alley  to  restore  the  eye's  freedom 
of  perspective,  and  nothing  more  was  wanting. 
The  American  eye's  freedom  of  perspective  is 
one  of  our  great  liberties. 

Oh,  say,  can  you  see — ? 

I  made  this  change,  of  course,  on  the  side 
nearest  the  straight,  property-division  bound, 
where  ran  an  invisible  wire  fence.  Thus  the  bed 
on  that  side  was  set  between  two  straight  par- 
allels, while  the  bed  on  the  lawn  side  remained 
between  waving  parallels.  This  gave  the  best 
simplicity  with  the  least  artificiality.  And  thus 

35 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

the  two  lanes  are  open  to  view  from  end  to  end, 
yet  each  has  two  deep  bays  on  the  side  nearest 
the  lawn,  bays  which  remain  unseen  till  one  ac- 
tually reaches  them  in  traversing  the  lane.  In 
such  a  bay  one  should  always  have,  I  think,  some 
floral  revelation  of  special  charm  worthy  of  the 
seclusion  and  the  surprise.  But  this  thought  is 
only  one  of  a  hundred  that  tell  me  my  garden 
is  not  a  finished  thing.  To  its  true  lover  a 
garden  never  is. 

Another  sort  of  bay,  the  sort  resulting  from  a 
swift  retreat  of  a  line  of  shrubberies  pursued  by 
the  lawn  and  then  swinging  round  and  returning 
upon  the  lawn  in  a  counter  pursuit,  I  thought  I 
had  learned  from  books  and  Miss  Bullard  and 
had  established  on  my  own  acre,  until  I  saw  the 
college  gardens  of  Oxford,  England,  and  the 
landscape  work  in  Hyde  Park,  London.  On  my 
return  thence  I  made  haste  to  give  my  own  gar- 
den's in-and-out  curves  twice  the  boldness  they 
had  had.  And  doubling  their  boldness  I  doubled 
their  beauty.  "Don't"  ever  let  your  acre's,  or 
half  or  quarter  acre's,  ground  lines  relax  into 
feebleness  or  shrink  into  pettiness.  "Don't" 


"The  lane  is  open  to  view  from  end  to  end.     It  has  two  deep  bays  on  the 
side  nearest  the  lawn." 

The  straight  line  of  high  growth  conceals  in  the  midst  of  its  foliage  a  wire  division  fence, 
and  makes  a  perfect  background  fcr  blooming  herbaceous  perennials. 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

ever  plan  a  lay-out  for  whose  free  swing  your 
limits  are  cramped. 

"Don't"  ever,  if  you  can  help  it,  says  another 
of  my  old  mistakes  to  me,  let  your  acre  lead 
your  guest  to  any  point  which  can  be  departed 
from  only  by  retracing  one's  steps.  Such  neces- 
sities involve  a  lapse  —  not  to  say  collapse  —  of 
interest,  which  makes  for  dulness  and  loss  of 
dignity.  Lack  what  my  own  acre  may,  I  have 
it  now  so  that  by  its  alleys,  lawns  and  contour 
paths  in  garden  and  grove  we  can  walk  and  walk 
through  every  part  of  it  without  once  meeting 
our  own  tracks,  and  that  is  not  all  because  of 
the  pleasant  fact  that  the  walks,  where  not 
turfed,  are  covered  with  pine-straw,  of  which 
each  new  September  drops  us  a  fresh  harvest. 

A  garden,  we  say,  should  never  compel  us  to 
go  back  the  way  we  came;  but  in  truth  a  garden 
should  never  compel  us  to  do  anything.  Its 
don'ts  should  be  laid  solely  on  itself.  Those  ap- 
plicable to  its  master,  mistress,  or  guests  should 
all  be  impossibilities,  not  requests.  "Private 
grounds,  no  crossing"  —  take  that  away,  please, 
wherever  you  can,  and  plant  your  margins  so 

37 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

that  there  can  be  no  crossing.  Wire  nettings 
hidden  by  shrubberies  from  all  but  the  shame- 
less trespasser  you  will  find  far  more  effective, 
more  promotive  to  beauty  and  more  courteous. 
"Don't"  make  your  garden  a  garden  of  don'ts. 
For  no  garden  is  quite  a  garden  until  it  is 
"Joyous  Gard."  Let  not  yours  or  mine  be  a 
garden  for  display.  Then  our  rhododendrons 
and  like  splendors  will  not  be  at  the  front  gate, 
and  our  grounds  be  less  and  less  worth  seeing  the 
farther  into  them  we  go.  Nor  let  yours  or  mine 
be  a  garden  of  pride.  The  ways  of  such  a  garden 
are  not  pleasantness  nor  its  paths  peace.  And  let 
us  not  have  a  garden  of  tiring  care  or  a  user  up 
of  precious  time.  That  is  not  good  citizenship. 
Neither  let  us  have  an  old-trousers,  sun-bonnet, 
black  finger-nails  garden — especially  if  you  are  a 
woman.  A  garden  that  makes  a  wife,  daughter 
or  sister  a  dowdy  is  hardly  "Joyous  Gard." 
Neither  is  one  which  makes  itself  a  mania  to  her 
and  an  affliction  to  her  family.  Let  us  not  even 
have,  you  or  me,  a  wonder  garden  —  of  arboreal 
or  floral  curiosities.  Perhaps  because  I  have  not 
travelled  enough  I  have  never  seen  a  garden  of 

38 


MY    OWN    ACRE 

exotics  that  was  a  real  garden  in  any  good  art 
sense;  in  any  way,  that  is,  lastingly  pleasing  to  a 
noble  spirit.  Let  your  garden,  and  let  mine,  be 
the  garden  of  joy.  For  the  only  way  it  can  be 
that,  on  and  on,  year  in,  year  out,  is  to  be  so  good 
in  art  and  so  finely  human  in  its  purposes  that 
to  have  it  and  daily  keep  it  will  make  us  more 
worth  while  to  ourselves  and  to  mankind  than 
to  go  without  it. 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 


THE     AMERICAN     GARDEN 

ALMOST  any  good  American  will  admit  it  to 
be  a  part  of  our  national  social  scheme,  I 
think,  —  if  we  have  a  social  scheme,  —  that 
everybody  shall  aspire  to  all  the  refinements  of 
life. 

Particularly  is  it  our  theory  that  every  one 
shall  propose  to  give  to  his  home  all  the  joys  and 
graces  which  are  anywhere  associated  with  the 
name  of  home.  Yet  until  of  late  we  have  neg- 
lected the  art  of  gardening.  Now  and  then  we 
see,  or  more  likely  we  read  about,  some  garden  of 
wonderful  beauty;  but  the  very  fame  of  it  points 
the  fact  that  really  artistic  gardening  is  not 
democratically  general  with  us. 

Our  cities  and  towns,  without  number,  have 
the  architect  and  the  engineer,  for  house  and  for 
landscape,  for  sky-scrapers  and  all  manner  of 
public  works;  we  have  the  nurseryman,  the 
florist;  we  have  parks,  shaded  boulevards  and 
riverside  and  lakeside  drives.  Under  private 

43 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

ownership  we  have  a  vast  multitude  of  exactly 
rectilinear  lawns,  extremely  bare  or  else  very 
badly  planted;  and  we  have  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  beautiful  dames  and  girls  who  "love 
flowers."  But  our  home  gardens,  our  home  gar- 
deners, either  professional  or  amateur,  where  are 
they?  Our  smaller  cities  by  scores  and  our 
towns  by  hundreds  are  full  of  home-dwellers  each 
privately  puzzled  to  know  why  every  one  of  his 
neighbors'  houses,  however  respectable  in  archi- 
tecture, stares  at  him  and  after  him  with  a  va- 
cant, deaf-mute  air  of  having  just  landed  in  this 
country,  without  friends. 

What  ails  these  dwellings  is  largely  lack  of 
true  gardening.  They  will  never  look  like 
homes,  never  look  really  human  and  benign,  that 
is,  until  they  are  set  in  a  gardening  worthy  of 
them.  For  a  garden  which  alike  in  its  dignity 
and  in  its  modesty  is  worthy  of  the  house  around 
which  it  is  set,  is  the  smile  of  the  place. 

In  the  small  city  of  Northampton,  Massachu- 
setts, there  has  been  for  many  years  an  annual 
prize  competition  of  amateur  flower-gardens. 
In  1913  there  were  over  a  thousand  homes, 

44 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

about  one-fourth  of  all  the  dwellings  in  the 
town,  in  this  pretty  contest.  Not  all,  not  half, 
these  competitors  could  make  a  show  worthy 
the  name  of  good  gardening,  but  every  one  of 
these  households  stood  pledged  to  do  something 
during  the  year  for  the  outdoor  improvement 
of  the  home,  and  hundreds  of  their  house  lots 
were  florally  beautiful.  If  I  seem  to  hurry  into 
a  mention  of  it  here  it  is  partly  in  the  notion 
that  such  a  recital  may  be  my  best  credentials  as 
the  writer  of  these  pages,  and  partly  in  the 
notion  that  such  a  concrete  example  may  possi- 
bly have  a  tendency  to  help  on  flower-gardening 
in  the  country  at  large  and  even  to  aid  us  in  de- 
termining what  American  flower-gardening  had 
best  be. 

For  the  reader's  better  advantage,  however, 
let  me  first  state  one  or  two  general  ideas  which 
have  given  this  activity  and  its  picturesque  re- 
sults particular  aspects  and  not  others. 

I  lately  heard  a  lady  ask  an  amateur  gar- 
dener, "What  is  the  garden's  foundation  prin- 
ciple?" 

There  was  a  certain  overgrown  pomp  in  the 

45 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

question's  form,  but  that  is  how  she  very  mod- 
estly asked  it,  and  I  will  take  no  liberty  with  its 
construction.  I  thought  his  reply  a  good  one. 

"We  have  all,"  he  said,  "come  up  from  wild 
nature.  In  wild  nature  there  are  innumerable 
delights,  but  they  are  qualified  by  countless  in- 
conveniences. The  cave,  tent,  cabin,  cottage 
and  castle  have  gradually  been  evolved  by  an 
orderly  accumulation  and  combination  of  de- 
fences and  conveniences  which  secure  to  us  a 
host  of  advantages  over  wild  nature  and  wild 
man.  Yet  rightly  we  are  loath  to  lose  any  more 
of  nature  than  we  must  in  order  to  be  her  mas- 
ters and  her  children  in  one,  and  to  gather  from 
her  the  largest  fund  of  profit  and  delight  she  can 
be  made  to  yield.  Hence  around  the  cottage, 
the  castle  or  the  palace  waves  and  blooms  the 
garden." 

Was  he  not  right  ?  This  is  why,  in  our  pleas- 
ant Northampton  affair,  we  have  accepted  it  as 
our  first  rule  of  private  gardening  that  the  house 
is  the  climacteric  note. 

This  is  why  the  garden  should  never  be  more 
architectural  and  artificial  than  the  house  of 

46 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

which  it  is  the  setting,  and  this  is  why  the  gar- 
den should  grow  less  and  less  architectural  and 
artificial  as  it  draws  away  from  the  house.  To 
say  the  same  thing  in  reverse,  the  garden,  as  it 
approaches  the  house,  should  accept  more  and 
more  discipline  —  domestication  —  social  refine- 
ment, until  the  house  itself  at  length  seems  as 
unabruptly  and  naturally  to  grow  up  out  of 
the  garden  as  the  high  keynote  rises  at  the  end 
of  a  lady's  song. 

By  this  understanding  of  the  matter  what  a 
fine  truce-note  is  blown  between  the  contending 
advocates  of  "natural"  and  of  "formal"  garden- 
ing !  The  right  choice  between  these  two  as- 
pects of  the  art,  and  the  right  degree  in  either 
choice,  depend  on  the  character  of  the  house. 
The  house  is  a  part  of  the  garden.  It  is  the  gar- 
den's brow  and  eyes.  In  gardening,  almost  the 
only  thing  which  costs  unduly  is  for  us  to  try  to 
give  our  house  some  other  house's  garden. 
One's  private  garden  should  never  be  quite  so 
far  removed  from  a  state  of  nature  as  his  house 
is.  Its  leading  function  should  be  to  delight  its 
house's  inmates  (and  intimates)  in  things  of 

47 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

nature  so  refined  as  to  inspire  and  satisfy  their 
happiest  moods.  Therefore  no  garden  should 
cost,  nor  look  as  if  it  cost,  an  outlay  of  money, 
time  or  toil  that  cramps  the  house's  own  ability 
to  minister  to  the  genuine  bodily  needs  and 
spiritual  enlargements  of  its  indwellers;  and 
therefore,  also,  it  should  never  seem  to  cost,  in 
its  first  making  or  in  its  daily  keeping,  so  much 
pains  as  to  lack,  itself,  a  garden's  supreme  essen- 
tial —  tranquillity. 

So,  then,  to  those  who  would  incite  whole 
streets  of  American  towns  to  become  florally 
beautiful,  "formal"  gardening  seems  hardly  the 
sort  to  recommend.  About  the  palatial  dwellings 
of  men  of  princely  revenue  it  may  be  enchanting. 
There  it  appears  quite  in  place.  For  with  all  its 
exquisite  artificiality  it  still  is  nearer  to  nature 
than  the  stately  edifice  it  surrounds  and  adorns. 
But  for  any  less  costly  homes  it  costs  too  much. 
It  is  expensive  in  its  first  outlay  and  it  demands 
constantly  the  greatest  care  and  the  highest 
skill.  Our  ordinary  American  life  is  too  busy 
for  it  unless  the  ground  is  quite  handed  over  to 
the  hired  professional  and  openly  betrays  itself 

48 


I  £ 


= 


II 


£  '-a 


H      ..  .   ;r   -- 

*•  ?P 
|    4^i 


!     lii 
«     i-7^ 

1   !S1 


2  =  6£  K 

I       11^ 

^  m 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

as  that  very  unsatisfying  thing,  a  "gardener's 
garden." 

Our  ordinary  American  life  is  also  too  near 
nature  for  the  formal  garden  to  come  in  between. 
Unless  our  formal  gardening  is  of  some  inexpen- 
sive sort  our  modest  dwelling-houses  give  us  an 
anti-climax,  and  there  is  no  inexpensive  sort 
of  formal  gardening.  Except  in  the  far  south 
our  American  climate  expatriates  it. 

A  very  good  practical  rule  would  be  for  none 
of  us  to  venture  upon  such  gardening  until  he  is 
well  able  to  keep  up  an  adequate  greenhouse. 
A  formal  garden  without  a  greenhouse  or  two  — 
or  three  —  is  a  glorious  army  on  a  war  footing, 
but  without  a  base  of  supplies.  It  is  largely  his 
greenhouses  which  make  the  public  gardener 
and  the  commercial  florist  so  misleading  an  ex- 
ample for  the  cottager  to  follow  in  his  private 
gardening. 

To  be  beautiful,  formal  gardening  requires 
stately  proportions.  Without  these  it  is  almost 
certain  to  be  petty  and  frivolous.  In  the  tiny 
gardens  of  British  and  European  peasants,  it  is 
true,  a  certain  formality  of  design  is  often  prac- 

49 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

tised  with  pleasing  success;  but  these  gardens  are 
a  by-product  of  peasant  toil,  and  in  America  we 
have  no  joy  in  contemplating  an  American 
home  limited  to  the  aspirations  of  peasant  life. 
In  such  gardening  there  is  a  constraint,  a  lack  of 
natural  freedom,  a  distance  from  nature,  and  a 
certain  contented  subserviency,  which  makes  it 
—  however  fortunate  it  may  be  under  other  so- 
cial conditions  —  wholly  unfit  to  express  the 
buoyant,  not  to  say  exuberant,  complacencies  of 
the  American  home.  For  these  we  want,  what 
we  have  not  yet  quite  evolved,  the  American 
garden.  When  this  comes  it  must  come,  of 
course,  unconsciously;  but  we  may  be  sure  it  will 
not  be  much  like  the  gardens  of  any  politically 
shut-in  people.  No,  not  even  of  those  supreme 
artists  in  gardening,  the  Japanese.  It  will  ex- 
press the  traits  of  our  American  domestic  life; 
our  strong  individuality  and  self-assurance,  our 
sense  of  unguarded  security,  our  affability  and 
unexclusiveness  and  our  dislike  to  high-walled 
privacy.  If  we  would  hasten  its  day  we  must 
make  way  for  it  along  the  lines  of  these  traits. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  in  following  these  lines 

50 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

we  can  contrive  to  adhere  faithfully  to  the  world- 
wide laws  of  all  true  art,  who  knows  but  our  very 
gardening  may  tend  to  correct  more  than  one 
shortcoming  or  excess  in  our  national  character  ? 
In  our  Northampton  experiment  it  has  been 
our  conviction  from  the  beginning  that  for  a 
private  garden  to  be  what  it  should  be  —  to 
have  a  happy  individuality  —  a  countenance  of 
its  own  —  one  worthy  to  be  its  own  —  it  must 
in  some  practical  way  be  the  fruit  of  its  house- 
holder's own  spirit  and  not  merely  of  some  hired 
gardener's.  If  one  can  employ  a  landscape-archi- 
tect, all  very  well;  but  the  most  of  us  cannot, 
and  after  all,  the  true  landscape-architect,  the 
artist  gardener,  works  on  this  principle  and 
seeks  to  convey  into  every  garden  distinctively 
the  soul  of  the  household  for  which  it  springs  and 
flowers. 

"Since  when  it  grows  and  smells,  I  swear, 
Not  of  itself  but  thee." 

Few  American  householders,  however,  have 
any  enthusiasm  for  this  theory,  which  many 
would  call  high-strung,  and  as  we  in  Northamp- 
ton cannot  undertake  to  counsel  and  direct  our 

51 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

neighbors'  hired  helps,  we  enroll  in  the  main 
branch  of  our  competition  only  those  who  garden 
for  themselves  and  hire  no  labor.  To  such  the 
twenty-one  prizes,  ranging  from  two  dollars  and 
a  half  up  to  fifteen  dollars,  are  a  strong  incentive, 
and  by  such  the  advice  of  visiting  committees  is 
eagerly  sought  and  followed.  The  public  edu- 
cative value  of  the  movement  is  probably  largest 
under  these  limitations,  for  in  this  way  we  show 
what  beautiful  results  may  be  got  on  smallest 
grounds  and  with  the  least  outlay.  Its  private 
educative  value,  too,  is  probably  largest  thus, 
because  thus  we  disseminate  as  a  home  delight  a 
practical  knowledge  of  aesthetic  principles  among 
those  who  may  at  any  time  find  it  expedient  to 
become  wage-earning  gardeners  on  the  home 
grounds  of  the  well-to-do. 

The  competing  gardens  being  kept  wholly 
without  hired  labor,  of  course  our  constant  ad- 
vice to  all  contestants  is  to  shun  formal  garden- 
ing. It  is  a  pity  that  in  nearly  all  our  cities  and 
towns  the  most  notable  examples  of  gardening 
are  found  in  the  parks,  boulevards,  and  ceme- 
teries. By  these  flaring  displays  thousands  of 
modest  cottagers  who  might  easily  provide,  on 


"Beautiful  results  may  be  got  on  smallest  grounds." 

This  is  half  of  a  back  yard,  the  whole  of  which  is  equally  handsome.     The  place  to  which  it 
belongs  took  a  capital  prize  in  the  Carnegie  Flower  Garden  Competition. 


"Muffle  your  architectural  angles  in  foliage  and  bloom." 

An  invisible  fault  of  this  planting  is  that  it  was  set  too  close  to  the  building  and  tended 
to  give  an  impression,  probably  groundless,  of  promoting  dampness.  Also  it  was  an 
inconvenience  to  mechanics  in  painting  or  repairing. 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

their  small  scale,  lovely  gardens  about  their 
dwellings  at  virtually  no  cost  and  with  no  bur- 
densome care,  get  a  notion  that  this,  and  this 
only,  is  artistic  gardening  and  hence  that  a  home 
garden  for  oneself  would  be  too  expensive  and 
troublesome  to  be  thought  of.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  few  are  tempted  to  mimic  them  on  a 
petty  scale,  and  so  spoil  their  little  grass-plots 
and  amuse,  without  entertaining,  their  not  more 
tasteful  but  only  less  aspiring  neighbors.  In 
Northampton,  in  our  Carnegie  prize  contest  — 
so  called  for  a  very  sufficient  and  pleasant  reason 
—  our  counsel  is  to  avoid  all  mimicry  in  garden- 
ing as  we  would  avoid  it  in  speech  or  in  gait. 
Sometimes  we  do  not  mind  being  repetitious. 
"In  gardening,"  we  say  —  as  if  we  had  never 
said  it  before  —  "almost  the  only  thing  which 
costs  unduly  —  in  money  or  in  mortification  — 
is  for  one  to  try  to  give  himself  somebody  else's 
garden !"  Often  we  say  this  twice  to  the  same 
person. 

One  of  the  reasons  we  give  against  it  is  that  it 
leads  to  toy  gardening,  and  toy  gardening  is  of 
all  sorts  the  most  pitiful  and  ridiculous.  "No 
true  art,"  we  say,  "can  tolerate  any  make-be- 

53 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

lieve  which  is  not  in  some  way  finer  than  the 
reality  it  simulates.  In  other  words,  imitation 
should  always  be  in  the  nature  of  an  amiable 
condescension.  Whatever  falseness,  pretension 
or  even  mere  frailty  or  smallness,  suggests  to  the 
eye  the  ineffectuality  of  a  toy  is  out  of  place  in 
any  sort  of  gardening."  We  do  not  actually 
speak  all  this,  but  we  imply  it,  and  we  often  find 
that  the  mere  utterance  of  the  one  word,  "toy 
gardening,"  has  a  magical  effect  to  suggest  all  the 
rest  and  to  overwhelm  with  contrition  the  bad 
taste  and  frivolity  of  many  a  misguided  attempt 
at  adornment.  At  that  word  of  exorcism  joints 
of  cerulean  sewer-pipe  crested  with  scarlet  ge- 
raniums, rows  of  whited  cobbles  along  the  walk 
or  drive  like  a  cannibal's  skulls  around  his  hut, 
purple  paint-kegs  of  petunias  on  the  scanty  door- 
steps, crimson  wash-kettles  of  verbenas,  ant-hill 
rockeries,  and  well-sweeps  and  curbs  where  no 
wells  are,  steal  modestly  and  forever  into  obliv- 
ion. 

Now,  when  we  so  preach  we  try  also  to  make 
it  very  plain  that  there  is  not  one  set  of  rules  for 
gardening  on  a  small  scale  of  expense  in  a  small 
piece  of  ground,  and  another  set  for  gardening  on 

54 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

a  larger  scale.  For  of  course  the  very  thing 
which  makes  the  small  garden  different  from  the 
large,  the  rich  man's  from  the  poor  man's,  the 
Scotch  or  Italian  peasant's  from  the  American 
mechanic's,  or  the  public  garden  from  the  pri- 
vate, is  the  universal  and  immutable  oneness  of 
the  great  canons  of  art.  One  of  our  competi- 
tors, having  honestly  purged  her  soul  of  every 
impulse  she  may  ever  have  had  to  mimic  the 
gardening  of  the  cemeteries,  planted  her  door- 
yard  with  a  trueness  of  art  which  made  it  the 
joy  of  all  beholders.  Only  then  was  it  that  a 
passing  admirer  stopped  and  cried:  "Upon  me 
soul,  Mrs.  Anonyma,  yir  gyairden  looks  joost 
loike  a  pooblic  pairk!"  He  meant  —  without 
knowing  it  —  that  the  spot  was  lovely  for  not 
trying  to  look  the  least  bit  like  a  public  park, 
and  he  was  right.  She  had  kept  what  it  would 
be  well  for  the  public  gardeners  to  keep  much 
better  than  some  of  them  do  —  the  Moral  Law 
of  Gardening. 

There  is  a  moral  law  of  gardening.     No  gar- 
den should  ever  tell  a  lie.     No  garden  should 

55 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

ever  put  on  any  false  pretence.  No  garden 
should  ever  break  a  promise.  To  the  present 
reader  these  proclamations  may  seem  very  trite; 
it  may  seem  very  trite  to  say  that  if  anything 
in  or  of  a  garden  is  meant  for  adornment,  it  must 
adorn;  but  we  have  to  say  such  things  to  many 
who  do  not  know  what  trite  means  —  who  think 
it  is  something  you  buy  from  the  butcher.  A 
thing  meant  for  adornment,  we  tell  them,  must 
so  truly  and  sufficiently  adorn  as  to  be  worth 
all  the  room  and  attention  it  takes  up.  Thou 
shalt  not  let  anything  in  thy  garden  take  away 
thy  guest's  attention  without  repaying  him  for 
it;  it  is  stealing. 

A  lady,  not  in  our  competition  but  one  of  its 
most  valued  patronesses,  lately  proposed  to  her- 
self to  place  in  the  centre  of  a  wide,  oval  lawn  a 
sun-dial  and  to  have  four  paths  cross  the  grass 
and  meet  there.  But  on  reflection  the  query 
came  to  her  - 

"In  my  unformal  garden  of  simplest  grove 
and  sward  will  a  sun-dial  —  posing  in  an  office  it 
never  performed  there,  and  will  never  again  be 
needed  for  anywhere  —  a  cabinet  relic  now  — 

56 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

will  a  posed  sun-dial  be  interesting  enough  when 
it  is  arrived  at  to  justify  a  special  journey  and 
four  kept-up  paths  which  cut  my  beautiful  grass- 
plot  into  quarters?" 

With  that  she  changed  her  mind  —  a  thing 
the  good  gardener  must  often  do  —  and  ap- 
pointed the  dial  to  a  place  where  one  comes  upon 
it  quite  incidentally  while  moving  from  one 
main  feature  of  the  grounds  to  another.  It  is 
now  a  pleasing,  mild  surprise  instead  of  a  tame 
fulfilment  of  a  showy  promise;  pleasing,  after  all, 
it  must,  however,  be  admitted,  to  the  toy-loving 
spirit,  since  the  sun-dial  has  long  been,  and 
henceforth  ever  will  be,  an  utterly  useless  thing 
in  a  garden,  only  true  to  art  when  it  stands  in  an 
old  garden,  a  genuine  historical  survival  of  its 
day  of  true  utility.  Only  in  such  a  case  does 
the  sun-dial  belong  to  the  good  morals  of  gar- 
dening. But  maybe  this  is  an  overstrict  rule 
for  the  majority  of  us  who  are  much  too  fond 
of  embellishments  and  display  —  the  rouge  and 
powder  of  high  art. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  go  to  quite  as  much 
pains  to  say  that  though  a  garden  may  not  lie 

57 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

nor  steal,  it  may  have  its  concealments;  they  are 
as  right  as  they  are  valuable.  One  of  the  first 
steps  in  the  making  of  a  garden  should  be  to  de- 
termine what  to  hide  and  how  most  gracefully 
to  hide  it.  A  garden  is  a  house's  garments,  its 
fig-leaves,  as  we  may  say,  and  the  garden's  con- 
cealments, like  its  revelations,  ought  always  to 
be  in  the  interest  of  comfort,  dignity,  and  charm. 

We  once  had  a  very  bumptious  member  on  our 
board  of  judges.  "My  dear  madam!"  he  ex- 
claimed to  an  aspirant  for  the  prizes,  the  under- 
pinning of  whose  dwelling  stood  out  unconcealed 
by  any  sprig  of  floral  growth,  "your  house  is 
barefooted !  Nobody  wants  to  see  your  house's 
underpinning,  any  more  than  he  wants  to  see 
your  own !" 

It  is  not  good  to  be  so  brusque  about  non- 
penitentiary  offences,  but  skilful  and  lovely  con- 
cealments in  gardening  were  his  hobby.  To  an- 
other he  whispered,  "My  dear  sir,  tell  your 
pretty  house  her  petticoat  shows!"  and  to  yet 
another,  "Take  all  those  shrubs  out  of  the  mid- 
dle of  your  lawn  and  'plant  out'  with  them  every 
feature  of  your  house  which  would  be  of  no  in- 

58 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

terest  to  you  if  the  house  were  not  yours.  Your 
house's  morals  may  be  all  right,  but  its  manners 
are  insufferable,  it  talks  so  much  about  itself  and 
its  family."  To  a  fourth  he  said:  "In  a  garden- 
ing sense  your  house  makes  too  much  noise;  you 
can  hear  its  right  angles  hit  the  ground.  Muffle 
them  !  Muffle  your  architectural  angles  in  foli- 
age and  bloom.  Up  in  the  air  they  may  be  ever 
so  correct  and  fine,  but  down  in  the  garden  and 
unclothed  they  are  heinous,  heinous  !" 

Another  precept  we  try  to  inculcate  in  our 
rounds  among  the  gardens,  another  command- 
ment in  the  moral  law  of  gardening,  is  that  with 
all  a  garden's  worthy  concealments  it  should 
never,  and  need  never,  be  frivolous  or  be  lacking 
in  candor.  I  know  an  amateur  gardener  —  and 
the  amateur  gardener,  like  the  amateur  pho- 
tographer, sometimes  ranks  higher  than  the  pro- 
fessional —  who  is  at  this  moment  altering  the 
location  of  a  sidewalk  gate  which  by  an  earlier 
owner  was  architecturally  misplaced  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  making  a  path  with  curves  —  and 
such  curves  !  —  instead  of  a  straight  and  honest 
one,  from  the  street  to  the  kitchen.  When  a 

59 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

path  is  sent  on  a  plain  business  errand  it  should 
never  loaf.  And  yet  those  lines  of  a  garden's 
layout  which  are  designed  not  for  business  but 
for  pleasure,  should  never  behave  as  though  they 
were  on  business;  they  should  loiter  just  enough 
to  make  their  guests  feel  at  ease,  while  not 
enough  to  waste  time.  How  like  a  perfect  lady, 
or  a  perfect  gentleman,  is  —  however  humble  or 
exalted  its  rank  —  a  garden  with  courtly  man- 
ners ! 

As  to  manners,  our  incipient  American  garden 
has  already  developed  one  trait  which  dis- 
tinguishes it  from  those  beyond  the  Atlantic. 
It  is  a  habit  which  reminds  one  of  what  some- 
body has  lately  said  about  Americans  them- 
selves: that,  whoever  they  are  and  whatever 
their  manners  may  be,  they  have  this  to  their 
credit,  that  they  unfailingly  desire  and  propose 
to  be  polite.  The  thing  we  are  hinting  at  is  our 
American  gardens'  excessive  openness.  Our  peo- 
ple have,  or  until  just  now  had,  almost  abolished 
the  fence  and  the  hedge.  A  gard,  yard,  garth, 
garden,  used  to  mean  an  enclosure,  a  close,  and 
implied  a  privacy  to  its  owner  superior  to  any 

60 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

he  enjoyed  outside  of  it.  But  now  that  we  no 
longer  have  any  military  need  of  privacy  we  are 
tempted  —  are  we  not  ?  —  to  overlook  its  spir- 
itual value.  We  seem  to  enjoy  publicity  better. 
In  our  American  eagerness  to  publish  everything 
for  everybody  and  to  everybody,  we  have  pub- 
lished our  gardens  —  published  them  in  paper 
bindings;  that  is  to  say,  with  their  boundaries 
visible  only  on  maps  filed  with  the  Registrar  of 
Deeds. 

Foreigners  who  travel  among  us  complain  that 
we  so  overdo  our  good-natured  endurance  of 
every  public  inconvenience  that  we  have  made 
it  a  national  misfortune  and  are  losing  our  sense 
of  our  public  rights.  This  obliteration  of  private 
boundaries  is  an  instance.  Our  public  spirit  and 
out  imperturbability  are  flattered  by  it,  but  our 
gardens,  except  among  the  rich,  have  become 
American  by  ceasing  to  be  gardens. 

I  have  a  neighbor  who  every  year  plants  a 
garden  of  annuals.  He  has  no  fence,  but  two 
of  his  neighbors  have  each  a  setter  dog.  These 
dogs  are  rarely  confined.  One  morning  I  saw 
him  put  in  the  seed  of  his  lovely  annuals  and 

61 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

leave  his  smoothly  raked  beds  already  a  pleasant 
show  and  a  prophecy  of  delight  while  yet  with- 
out a  spray  of  green.  An  hour  later  I  saw  those 
two  setter  dogs  wrestling  and  sprawling  around 
in  joyous  circles  all  over  those  garden  beds. 
"Gay,  guiltless  pair!"  What  is  one  to  do  in 
such  a  case,  in  a  land  where  everybody  is  ex- 
pected to  take  everything  good-naturedly,  and 
where  a  fence  is  sign  of  a  sour  temper  ?  Of  course 
he  can  do  as  others  do,  and  have  no  garden. 
But  to  have  no  garden  is  a  distinct  poverty  in 
a  householder's  life,  whether  he  knows  it  or  not, 
and  —  suppose  he  very  much  wants  a  garden  ? 
They  were  the  well-to-do  who  began  this 
abolition  movement  against  enclosures  and  I 
have  an  idea  it  never  would  have  had  a  begin- 
ning had  there  prevailed  generally,  democratic- 
ally, among  us  a  sentiment  for  real  gardening, 
and  a  knowledge  of  its  practical  principles;  for 
with  this  sentiment  and  knowledge  we  should 
have  had  that  sweet  experience  of  outdoor  pri- 
vacy for  lack  of  which  we  lose  one  of  the  noblest 
charms  of  home.  The  well-to-do  started  the 
fashion,  it  cost  less  money  to  follow  than  to  with- 

62 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

stand  it  and  presently  the  landlords  of  the  poor 
utilized  it. 

The  poor  man  —  the  poor  woman  -r-  needs 
the  protection  of  a  fence  to  a  degree  of  which 
the  well-to-do  know  nothing.  In  the  common 
interest  of  the  whole  community,  of  any  com- 
munity, the  poor  man  —  the  poor  woman  — 
ought  to  have  a  garden;  but  if  they  are  going  to 
have  a  garden  they  ought  to  have  a  fence.  We 
in  Northampton  know  scores  of  poor  homes 
whose  tenants  strive  year  after  year  to  establish 
some  floral  beauty  about  them,  and  fail  for  want 
of  enclosures.  The  neighbors'  children,  their 
dogs,  their  cats,  geese,  ducks,  hens  —  it  is  use- 
less. Many  refuse  to  make  the  effort;  some,  I 
say,  make  it  and  give  it  up,  and  now  and  then 
some  one  wins  a  surprising  and  delightful  suc- 
cess. Two  or  three  such  have  taken  high  prizes 
in  our  competition.  The  two  chief  things  which 
made  their  triumph  possible  were,  first,  an 
invincible  passion  for  gardening,  and,  second, 
poultry-netting. 

A  great  new  boon  to  the  home  gardener  they 
are,  these  wire  fencings  and  nettings.  With 

63 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

them  ever  so  many  things  may  be  done  now  at  a 
quarter  or  tenth  of  what  they  would  once  have 
cost.  Our  old-fashioned  fences  were  sometimes 
very  expensive,  sometimes  very  perishable,  some- 
times both.  Also  they  were  apt  to  be  very  ugly. 
Yet  instead  of  concealing  them  we  made  them  a 
display,  while  the  shrubbery  which  should  have 
masked  them  in  leaf  and  bloom  stood  scattered 
over  the  lawn,  each  little  new  bush  by  itself,  vis- 
ibly if  not  audibly  saying  — 

"You'd  scarce  expect  one  of  my  age " 

etc. ;  the  shrubs  orphaned,  the  lawn  destroyed. 

If  the  enclosure  was  a  hedge  it  had  to  be  a  tight 
one  or  else  it  did  not  enclose.  Now  wire  net- 
ting charms  away  these  embarrassments.  Your 
hedge  can  be  as  loose  as  you  care  to  have  it,  while 
your  enclosure  may  be  rigidly  effective  yet  be 
hidden  from  the  eye  by  undulating  fence-rows; 
and  as  we  now  have  definite  bounds  and  corners 
to  plant  out,  we  do  not  so  often  as  formerly  need 
to  be  reminded  of  Frederick  Law  Olmsted's  fa- 
vorite maxim,  "Take  care  of  the  corners,  and  the 
centres  will  take  care  of  themselves." 

64 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

Here  there  is  a  word  to  be  added  in  the  inter- 
est of  home-lovers,  whose  tastes  we  properly 
expect  to  find  more  highly  trained  than  those  of 
the  average  tenant  cottager.  Our  American 
love  of  spaciousness  leads  us  to  fancy  that  — 
not  to-day  or  to-morrow,  but  somewhere  in  a 
near  future  —  we  are  going  to  unite  our  unf enced 
lawns  in  a  concerted  park  treatment:  a  sort 
of  wee  horticultural  United  States  comprised 
within  a  few  city  squares;  but  ever  our  American 
individualism  stands  broadly  in  the  way,  and 
our  gardens  almost  never  relate  themselves  to 
one  another  with  that  intimacy  which  their 
absence  of  boundaries  demands  in  order  to  take 
on  any  special  beauty,  nobility,  delightsomeness, 
of  gardening.  The  true  gardener  —  who,  if  he 
is  reading  this,  must  be  getting  very  tired  of  our 
insistent  triteness  —  carefully  keeps  in  mind  the 
laws  of  linear  and  of  aerial  perspective,  no  mat- 
ter how  large  or  small  the  garden.  The  relative 
stature  of  things,  both  actual  and  prospective; 
their  breadth;  the  breadth  or  slenderness,  dark- 
ness or  lightness,  openness  or  density,  of  their 
foliage;  the  splendor  or  delicacy  of  their  flowers, 

65 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

whether  in  size  or  in  color;  the  season  of  their 
blooming;  the  contour  of  the  grounds  —  all  these 
points  must  be  taken  into  account  in  determin- 
ing where  things  are  to  stand  and  how  be 
grouped.  Once  the  fence  or  hedge  was  the 
frame  of  the  picture;  but  now  our  pictures,  on 
almost  any  street  of  unpalatial,  comfortable 
homes,  touch  edge  to  edge  without  frames,  and 
the  reason  they  do  not  mar  one  another's  ef- 
fects is  that  they  have  no  particular  effects  to 
be  marred,  but  lie  side  by  side  as  undiscord- 
antly  as  so  many  string  instruments  without 
strings.  Let  us  hope  for  a  time  when  they  will 
rise  in  insurrection,  resolved  to  be  either  parts 
of  a  private  park,  or  each  one  a  whole  private 
garden. 

In  our  Carnegie  prize  contest  nothing  yields 
its  judges  more  pleasure  than  to  inculcate  the 
garden  rules  of  perspective  to  which  we  have 
just  referred  and  to  see  the  blissful  complacency 
of  those  who  successfully  carry  them  out.  I 
have  now  in  my  mind's  eye  a  garden  to  which 
was  awarded  the  capital  prize  of  1903.  A  cot- 
tage of  maybe  six  small  rooms  crowns  a  high 

66 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

bank  on  a  corner  where  two  rural  streets  cross. 
There  are  a  few  square  yards  of  lawn  on  its 
front,  and  still  fewer  (scarcely  eight  or  ten)  on 
the  side  next  the  cross-street,  but  on  the  other 
two  sides  there  is  nearly  a  quarter  of  an  acre. 
On  these  two  sides  the  limits  touch  other  gar- 
dens, and  all  four  sides  are  entirely  without 
fencing.  From  the  front  sward  have  been  taken 
away  a  number  of  good  shrubs  which  once  broke 
it  into  ineffectual  bits,  and  these  have  been 
grouped  against  the  inward  and  outward  angles 
of  the  house.  The  front  porch  is  garlanded  — 
not  smothered  —  with  vines  whose  flowers  are 
all  white,  pink,  blue  or  light  purple.  About 
the  base  of  the  porch  and  of  all  the  house's  front, 
bloom  flowers  of  these  same  delicate  tints,  the 
tallest  nearest  the  house,  the  lesser  at  their  knees 
and  feet.  The  edges  of  the  beds  —  gentle  waves 
that  never  degenerate  to  straightness  —  are 
thickly  bordered  with  mignonette.  Not  an 
audacious  thing,  not  a  red  blossom  nor  a  strong 
yellow  one,  nor  one  broad  leaf,  nor  any  mass  of 
dense  or  dark  foliage,  comes  into  view  until  one 
reaches  a  side  of  the  dwelling.  But  there  at 

67 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

once  he  finds  the  second  phase  in  a  crescendo 
of  floral  colors.  The  base  of  the  house,  and  es- 
pecially those  empty  eye-sockets,  the  cellar  win- 
dows, are  veiled  in  exultant  bloom,  yellows  pre- 
dominating. Then  at  the  back  of  the  place 
comes  the  full  chorus,  and  red  flowers  overmaster 
the  yellow,  though  the  delicate  tints  with  which 
the  scheme  began  are  still  present  to  preserve  the 
dignity  and  suavity  of  all  —  the  ladies  of  the 
feast.  The  paths  are  only  one  or  two  and 
they  never  turn  abruptly  and  ask  you  to  keep  off 
their  corners;  they  have  none.  Neither  have  the 
flower-beds.  They  flow  wideningly  around  the 
hard  turnings  of  the  house  with  the  grace  of  a 
rivulet.  Out  on  the  two  wider  sides  of  the  lawn 
nothing  breaks  the  smooth  green  but  a  well- 
situated  tree  or  two  until  the  limits  of  the  prem- 
ises are  reached,  and  there,  in  lines  that  widen 
and  narrow  and  widen  again  and  hide  the  sur- 
veyor's angles,  the  flowers  rise  once  more  in  a 
final  burst  of  innumerable  blossoms  and  splendid 
hues  —  a  kind  of  sunset  of  the  garden's  own. 

When  this  place,  five  seasons  ago,  first  entered 
the  competition,  it  could  hardly  be  called  a  gar- 

68 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

den  at  all.  Yet  it  was  already  superior  to  many 
rivals.  In  those  days  it  seemed  to  us  as  though 
scarcely  one  of  our  working  people  in  a  hundred 
knew  that  a  garden  was  anything  more  than  a 
bed  of  flowers  set  down  anywhere  and  anyhow. 
It  was  a  common  experience  for  us  to  be  led  by 
an  unkept  path  and  through  a  patch  of  weeds  or 
across  an  ungrassed  dooryard  full  of  rubbish, 
in  order  to  reach  a  so-called  garden  which  had 
never  spoken  a  civil  word  to  the  house  nor  got 
one  from  it.  Now,  the  understanding  is  that 
every  part  of  the  premises,  every  outdoor  thing 
on  the  premises  —  path,  fence,  truck-patch,  sta- 
ble, stable-yard,  hen-yard,  tennis  or  croquet- 
court  —  everything  is  either  a  part  of  the  gar- 
den or  is  so  reasonably  related  to  it  that  from 
whatever  point  one  views  the  place  he  beholds  a 
single  satisfactory  picture. 

This,  I  say,  is  the  understanding.  I  do  not 
say  that  even  among  our  prize-winners  anybody 
has  yet  perfectly  attained  this,  although  a  few 
have  come  very  near  it.  With  these  the  main 
surviving  drawback  is  that  the  artistic  effect  is 
each  season  so  long  coming  and  passes  away 

69 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

so  soon  —  cometh  up  as  a  flower  and  presently 
has  withered. 

One  of  our  most  gifted  literary  critics  a  while 
ago  pointed  out  the  poetic  charm  of  evanescence; 
pointed  it  out  more  plainly,  I  fancy,  than  it  has 
ever  been  shown  before.  But  evanescence  has 
this  poetic  charm  chiefly  in  nature,  almost  never 
in  art.  The  transitoriness  of  a  sunset  glory,  or  of 
human  life,  is  rife  with  poetic  pathos  because 
it  is  a  transitoriness  which  cannot  be  helped. 
Therein  lay  the  charm  of  that  poetic  wonder 
and  marvel  of  its  day  (1893)  the  Columbian  Ex- 
position's "White  City";  it  was  an  architectural 
triumph  and  glory  which  we  could  not  have  ex- 
cept on  condition  that  it  should  vanish  with  the 
swiftness  of  an  aurora.  Even  so,  there  would 
have  been  little  poetry  in  its  evanescence  if, 
through  bad  workmanship  or  any  obvious  folly, 
it  had  failed  to  fulfil  the  transient  purpose  for 
which  it  was  erected.  The  only  poetic  evanes- 
cence is  the  evanescence  that  is  inevitable.  An 
unnecessary  evanescence  in  things  we  make  is 
bad  art.  If  I  remember  the  story  correctly,  it 
was  to  a  Roman  lady  that  Benvenuto  Cellini 

70 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

took  the  exquisite  waxen  model  of  some  piece  of 
goldsmithing  she  had  commissioned  him  to  exe- 
cute for  her.  So  delighted  was  she  with  this 
mere  model  that  she  longed  to  keep  it  and  called 
it  the  perfection  of  art,  or  some  such  word.  But 
Benvenuto  said,  No,  he  could  not  claim  for  it 
the  high  name  of  art  until  he  should  have  repro- 
duced it  in  gold,  that  being  the  most  worthy 
material  in  which  it  would  endure  the  use  for 
which  it  was  designed. 

Unless  the  great  Italian  was  in  error,  then,  a 
garden  ought  not  to  be  so  largely  made  up  of 
plants  which  perish  with  the  summer  as  to  be, 
at  their  death,  no  longer  a  garden.  Said  that 
harsh-spoken  judge  whom  we  have  already  once 
or  twice  quoted  —  that  shepherd's-dog  of  a  judge 
—  at  one  of  the  annual  bestowals  of  our  Car- 
negie garden  prizes: 

"Almost  any  planting  about  the  base  of  a 
building,  fence  or  wall  is  better  than  none;  but 
for  this  purpose  shrubs  are  far  better  than  an- 
nual flowers.  Annuals  do  not  sufficiently  mask 
the  hard,  offensive  right-angles  of  the  structure's 
corners  or  of  the  line  whence  it  starts  up  from 

71 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

the  ground.  And  even  if  sometimes  they  do, 
they  take  so  long  to  grow  enough  to  do  it,  and 
are  so  soon  gone  with  the  first  cold  blast,  that 
the  things  they  are  to  hide  are  for  the  most  of 
the  year  not  hidden.  Besides  which,  even  at 
their  best  moments,  when  undoubtedly  they  are 
very  beautiful,  they  have  not  a  sufficiently  sub- 
stantial look  to  be  good  company  for  the  solid 
structure  they  are  set  against.  Sweetly,  mod- 
estly, yet  obstinately,  they  confess  to  every 
passer-by  that  they  did  not  come,  but  were 
put  there  and  were  put  there  only  last  spring. 
Shrubs,  contrariwise,  give  a  feeling  that  they 
have  sprung  and  grown  there  in  the  course  of 
nature  and  of  the  years,  and  so  convey  to  the 
house  what  so  many  American  homes  stand  in 
want  of  -  -  a  quiet  air  of  being  long  married  and 
a  mother  of  growing  children. 

"Flowering  shrubs  of  well-chosen  kinds  are  in 
leaf  two-thirds  of  the  year,  and  their  leafless 
branches  and  twigs  are  a  pleasing  relief  to  the 
structure's  cold  nakedness  even  through  the 
winter.  I  have  seen  a  house,  whose  mistress 
was  too  exclusively  fond  of  annuals,  stand  wait- 

72 


After  the  first  frost  annual  plantings  cease  to  be  attractive. 


Shrubbery  versus  annuals. 

The  contrast  in  these  two  pictures  is  between  two  small  street  plantings  standing  in  sight 
of  each  other,  one  of  annuals  with  a  decorative  effect  and  lasting  three  months,  the  other 
with  shrubberies  and  lasting  nine  months. 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

ing  for  its  shoes  and  stockings  from  October  clear 
round  to  August,  and  then  barefooted  again  in 
October.  In  such  gardening  there  is  too  much 
of  love's  labor  lost.  If  one's  grounds  are  so 
small  that  there  is  no  better  place  for  the  an- 
nuals they  can  be  planted  against  the  shrubs, 
as  the  shrubs  are  planted  against  the  building  or 
fence.  At  any  rate  they  should  never  be  bedded 
out  in  the  midst  of  the  lawn,  and  quite  as  em- 
phatically they  should  never,  alone,  be  set  to 
mark  the  boundary  lines  of  a  property." 

It  is  hoped  these  sayings,  quoted  or  other- 
wise, may  seem  the  more  in  place  here  because 
they  contemplate  the  aspects  likely  to  char- 
acterize the  American  garden  whenever  that 
garden  fully  arrives.  We  like  largeness.  There 
are  many  other  qualities  to  desire,  and  to  desire 
even  more;  but  if  we  give  them  also  the  liking 
we  truly  owe  them  it  is  right  for  us  to  like 
largeness.  Certainly  it  is  better  to  like  large- 
ness even  for  itself,  rather  than  smallness  for 
itself.  Especially  is  it  right  that  we  should  like 
our  gardens  to  look  as  large  as  we  can  make 
them  appear.  Our  countless  lawns,  naked  clear 

73 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

up  into  their  rigid  corners  and  to  their  dividing 
lines,  are  naked  in  revolt  against  the  earlier  fash- 
ion of  spotting  them  over  with  shrubs,  the  easi- 
est as  well  as  the  worst  way  of  making  a  place 
look  small.  But  a  naked  lawn  does  not  make 
the  premises  look  as  large,  nor  does  it  look  as 
large  itself,  as  it  will  if  planted  in  the  manner 
we  venture  to  commend  to  our  Northampton 
prize-seekers.  Between  any  two  points  a  line  of 
shrubbery  swinging  in  and  out  in  strong,  grace- 
ful undulations  appears  much  longer  than  a 
straight  one,  because  it  is  longer.  But,  over 
and  above  this,  it  makes  the  distance  between 
the  two  points  seem  greater.  Everybody  knows 
the  old  boast  of  the  landscape-architects  --  that 
they  can  make  one  piece  of  ground  look  twice  as 
large  as  another  of  the  same  measure,  however 
small,  by  merely  grading  and  planting  the  two 
on  contrary  schemes.  The  present  writer  knows 
one  small  street  in  his  town,  a  street  of  fair 
dwellings,  on  which  every  lawn  is  diminished 
to  the  eye  by  faulty  grading. 

For  this  he  has  no  occasion  to  make  himself 
responsible  but  there  are  certain  empty  lots  not 

74 


Shrubs  are  better  than  annuals  for  masking  right  angles.     South  Hall,  Wil- 
liston  Seminary.     (See  "Where  to  Plant  What.") 


".  .  .  a  line  of  shrubbery  swinging  in  and  out  in  strong,  graceful  undulations." 

The  straight  planting  on  this  picture's  left  masks  the  back  yards  of  three  neighbors,  and 
gives  them  a  privacy  as  well  as  My  Own  Acre.  The  curved  planting  shows  but  one  of 
three  bends.  It  was  here  that  I  first  made  the  mistake  of  planting  a  sinuous  alley.  (See 
"My  Own  Acre,"  p.  3-4.) 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

far  from  him  for  whose  aspect  he  is  answerable, 
having  graded  them  himself  (before  he  knew 
how).  He  has  repeatedly  heard  their  depth 
estimated  at  ninety  feet,  never  at  more.  In 
fact  it  is  one  hundred  and  thirty-nine.  How- 
ever, he  has  somewhat  to  do  also  with  a  garden 
whose  grading  was  quite  as  bad  —  identical, 
indeed  —  whose  fault  has  been  covered  up  and 
its  depth  made  to  seem  actually  greater  than  it 
is,  entirely  by  a  corrective  planting  of  its  shrub- 
bery. 

One  of  the  happiest  things  about  gardening  is 
that  when  it  is  bad  you  can  always  —  you  and 
time  —  you  and  year  after  next  —  make  it  good. 
It  is  very  easy  to  think  of  the  plants,  beds  and 
paths  of  a  garden  as  things  which,  being  once 
placed,  must  stay  where  they  are;  but  it  is  short- 
sighted and  it  is  fatal  to  effective  gardening. 
We  should  look  upon  the  arrangement  of  things 
in  our  garden  very  much  as  a  housekeeper  looks 
on  the  arrangement  of  the  furniture  in  her  house. 
Except  buildings,  pavements  and  great  trees  — 
and  not  always  excepting  the  trees  —  we  should 
regard  nothing  in  it  as  permanent  architecture 

75 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

but  only  as  furnishment  and  decoration.  At 
favorable  moments  you  will  make  whatever  rear- 
rangement may  seem  to  you  good.  A  shrub's 
mere  being  in  a  certain  place  is  no  final  reason 
that  it  should  stay  there;  a  shrub  or  a  dozen 
shrubs  —  next  spring  or  fall  you  may  transplant 
them.  A  shrub,  or  even  a  tree,  may  belong  where 
it  is  this  season,  and  the  next  and  the  next; 
and  yet  in  the  fourth  year,  because  of  its  excessive 
growth,  of  the  more  desired  growth  of  something 
else,  or  of  some  rearrangement  of  other  things, 
that  spot  may  be  no  longer  the  best  place  for  it. 
Very  few  shrubs  are  injured  by  careful  and 
seasonable,  even  though  repeated,  transplant- 
ing. Many  are  benefited  by  one  or  another 
effect  of  the  process:  by  the  root  pruning  they 
get,  by  the  "division,"  by  the  change  of  soil,  by 
change  of  exposure  or  even  by  backset  in 
growth.  Transplanting  is  part  of  a  garden's 
good  discipline.  It  is  almost  as  necessary  to 
the  best  results  as  pruning  —  on  which  grave 
subject  there  is  no  room  to  speak  here.  The 
owner  even  of  an  American  garden  should  rule 
his  garden,  not  be  ruled  by  it.  Yet  he  should 

76 


THE    AMERICAN    GARDEN 

rule  without  oppression,  and  it  will  not  be  truly 
American  if  it  fails  to  show  at  a  glance  that 
it  is  not  overgardened. 

Thus  do  we  propose  to  exhort  our  next  sea- 
son's competitors  as  this  fall  and  winter  they 
gather  at  our  projected  indoor  garden-talks,  or 
as  we  go  among  them  to  offer  counsel  concerning 
their  grounds  plans  for  next  spring.  And  we 
hope  not  to  omit  to  say,  as  we  had  almost  omit- 
ted to  say  here,  in  behalf  of  the  kind  of  garden 
we  preach,  that  shrubs,  the  most  of  them,  re- 
quire no  great  enrichment  of  the  soil  —  an  im- 
portant consideration.  And  we  shall  take  much 
care  to  recommend  the  perusal  of  books  on  gar- 
dening. Once  this  gentle  art  was  largely  kept  a 
close  secret  of  craftsmen;  but  now  all  that  can 
be  put  into  books  is  in  books,  and  the  books  are 
non-technical,  brief  and  inexpensive;  or  if  vo- 
luminous and  costly,  as  some  of  the  best  needs 
must  be,  are  in  the  public  libraries.  In  their 
pages  are  a  host  of  facts  (indexed !)  which  once 
had  to  be  burdensomely  remembered.  For  one 
preoccupied  with  other  cares  —  as  every  ama- 
teur gardener  ought  to  be  —  these  books  are 

77 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

no  mean  part  of  his  equipment;  they  are  as 
necessary  to  his  best  gardening  as  the  dictionary 
to  his  best  English. 

What  a  daily,  hourly,  unfailing  wonder  are  the 
modern  opportunities  and  facilities  by  which  we 
are  surrounded !  If  the  present  reader  and  the 
present  writer,  and  maybe  a  few  others,  will  but 
respond  to  them  worthily,  who  knows  but  we 
may  ourselves  live  to  see,  and  to  see  as  demo- 
cratically common  as  telephones  and  electric 
cars,  the  American  garden?  Of  course  there  is 
ever  and  ever  so  much  more  to  be  said  about 
it,  and  the  present  writer  is  not  at  all  weary; 
but  he  hears  his  reader's  clock  telling  the  hour 
and  feels  very  sure  it  is  correct. 


78 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

OFTEN  one's  hands  are  too  heavily  veneered 
with  garden  loam  for  him  to  go  to  his 
books  to  verify  a  quotation.  It  was  the  great 
Jefferson,  was  it  not,  who  laid  into  the  founda- 
tions of  American  democracy  the  imperishable 
maxim  that  "That  gardening  is  best  which  gar- 
dens the  least"?  My  rendition  of  it  may  be 
more  a  parody  than  a  quotation  but,  whatever 
its  inaccuracy,  to  me  it  still  sounds  Jefferso- 
nian  —  Joseph  Jeffersonian. 

Whether  we  read  it  "garden"  or  "govern,"  it 
has  this  fine  mark  of  a  masterful  utterance,  that 
it  makes  no  perceptible  effort  to  protect  itself 
against  the  caviller  or  the  simpleton;  from  men, 
for  instance,  who  would  interpret  it  as  meaning 
that  the  only  perfect  government,  or  gardening, 
is  none  at  all.  Speaking  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  garden-lover,  I  suppose  the  true  signification 
is  that  the  best  government  is  the  government 

81 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

which  procures  and  preserves  the  noblest  hap- 
piness of  the  community  with  the  least  enthral- 
ment  of  the  individual. 

Now,  I  hope  that  as  world-citizens  and  even 
as  Americans  we  may  bear  in  mind  that,  while 
this  maxim  may  be  wholly  true,  it  is  not  there- 
fore the  whole  truth.  What  maxim  is  ?  Let  us 
ever  keep  a  sweet,  self-respecting  modesty  with 
which  to  confront  and  consort  with  those  who 
see  the  science  of  government,  or  art  of  garden- 
ing, from  the  standpoint  of  some  other  equally 
true  fraction  of  the  whole  truth.  All  we  need 
here  maintain  for  our  Jeffersonian  maxim  is  that 
its  wide  domination  in  American  sentiment  ex- 
plains the  larger  part  of  all  the  merits  and 
faults  of  American  government  —  and  American 
gardening.  It  accounts  for  nearly  all  our  Amer- 
ican laws  and  ordinances,  manners,  customs, 
and  whims,  and  in  the  great  discussion  of  Where 
to  Plant  What  (in  America)  no  one  need  hope 
to  prevail  who  does  not  recognize  that  this  high 
principle  of  American  democracy  is  the  best  rule 
for  American  gardening.  That  gardening  is 
best,  for  most  Americans,  which  best  ministers 

82 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

to  man's  felicity  with  least  disturbance  of  na- 
ture's freedom. 

Hence  the  initial  question  —  a  question  which 
every  amateur  gardener  must  answer  for  him- 
self. How  much  subserviency  of  nature  to  art 
and  utility  is  really  necessary  to  my  own  and 
my  friends'  and  neighbors'  best  delight  ?  For  — 
be  not  deceived  —  however  enraptured  of  wild 
nature  you  may  be,  you  do  and  must  require 
of  her  some  subserviency  close  about  your  own 
dwelling.  You  cannot  there  persistently  enjoy 
the  wolf  and  the  panther,  the  muskrat,  buzzard, 
gopher,  rattlesnake,  poison-ivy  and  skunk  in 
full  swing,  as  it  were.  How  much,  then,  of  na- 
ture's subserviency  does  the  range  of  your  tastes 
demand?  Also,  how  much  will  your  purse 
allow?  For  it  is  as  true  in  gardening  as  in 
statecraft  that,  your  government  being  once 
genuinely  established,  the  more  of  it  you  have, 
the  more  you  must  pay  for  it.  In  gardening,  as 
in  government,  the  cost  of  the  scheme  is  not  in 
proportion  to  the  goodness  or  badness  of  its  art, 
but  to  its  intensity. 

This  is  why  the  general  and  very  sane  incli- 

83 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

nation  of  our  American  preferences  is  away  from 
that  intense  sort  of  gardening  called  "formal," 
and  toward  that  rather  unfairly  termed  "in- 
formal" method  which  here,  at  least,  I  should 
like  to  distinguish  as  "free-line"  gardening.  A 
free  people  who  govern  leniently  will  garden 
leniently.  Their  gardening  will  not  be  a  vexing 
tax  upon  themselves,  upon  others,  or  upon  the 
garden.  Whatever  freedom  it  takes  away  from 
themselves  or  others  or  the  garden  will  be  no 
more  than  is  required  for  the  noblest  delight; 
and  whatever  freedom  remains  untaken,  such 
gardening  will  help  everybody  to  exercise  and 
enjoy. 

The  garden  of  free  lines,  provided  only  it  be  a 
real  garden  under  a  real  government,  is,  to  my 
eye,  an  angel's  protest  against  every  species  and 
degree  of  tyranny  and  oppression,  and  such  a 
garden,  however  small  or  extensive,  will  contain 
a  large  proportion  of  flowering  shrubbery.  Be- 
cause a  garden  should  not,  any  more  than  my 
lady's  face,  have  all  its  features  —  nose,  eyes, 
ears,  lips  —  of  one  size  ?  No,  that  is  true  of 
all  gardening  alike;  but  because  with  flowering 

84 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

shrubbery  our  gardening  can  be  more  lenient 
than  with  annuals  alone,  or  with  only  herbaceous 
plants  and  evergreens. 

So,  then,  our  problem,  Where  to  Plant  What, 
may  become  for  a  moment,  Where  to  Plant 
Shrubbery;  and  the  response  of  the  free-line  gar- 
den will  be,  of  course,  "Remember,  concerning 
each  separate  shrub,  that  he  or  she  —  or  it,  if 
you  really  prefer  the  neuter  —  is  your  guest,  and 
plant  him  or  her  or  it  where  it  will  best  enjoy 
itself,  while  promoting  the  whole  company's 
joy."  Before  it  has  arrived  in  the  garden, 
therefore,  learn  —  and  carefully  consider  —  its 
likes  and  dislikes,  habits,  manners  and  accom- 
plishments and  its  friendly  or  possibly  un- 
friendly relations  with  your  other  guests.  This 
done,  determine  between  whom  and  whom  you 
will  seat  it;  between  what  and  what  you  will 
plant  it,  that  is,  so  as  to  "draw  it  out,"  as  we 
say  of  diffident  or  reticent  persons;  or  to  use  it 
for  drawing  out  others  of  less  social  address. 
But  how  many  a  lovely  shrub  has  arrived  where 
it  was  urgently  invited,  and  found  that  its  host 
or  hostess,  or  both,  had  actually  forgotten  its 

85 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

name !  Did  not  know  how  to  introduce  it  to 
any  fellow  guest,  or  whether  it  loved  sun  or 
shade,  loam,  peat,  clay,  leaf-mould  or  sand, 
wetness  or  dryness;  and  yet  should  have  found 
all  that  out  in  the  proper  blue-book  (horticul- 
tural dictionary)  before  inviting  the  poor  mor- 
tified guest  at  all. 

"Oh,  pray  be  seated  —  anywhere.  Plant 
yourself  alone  in  the  middle.  This  is  Liberty 
Garden." 

"It  is  no  such  thing,"  says  the  tear-bedewed 
beauty  to  herself;  "it's  Anarchy  Garden."  Yet, 
like  the  lady  she  is,  she  stays  where  she  is  put, 
and  gets  along  surprisingly  well. 

New  England  calls  Northampton  one  of  her 
most  beautiful  towns.  But  its  beauty  lies  in  the 
natural  landscape  in  and  around  it,  in  the  rise, 
fall,  and  swing  of  the  seat  on  which  it  sits,  the 
graceful  curving  of  its  streets,  the  noble  spread 
of  its  great  elms  and  maples,  the  green  and  blue 
openness  of  grounds  everywhere  about  its  mod- 
est homes  and  its  highly  picturesque  outlook 
upon  distant  hills  and  mountains  and  interven- 
ing meadows  and  fields,  with  the  Connecticut 


81 
ll 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

winding  through.  Its  architecture  is  in  three  or 
four  instances  admirable  though  not  extraor- 
dinary, and,  as  in  almost  every  town  in  our  vast 
America,  there  are  hardly  five  householders  in 
it  who  are  really  skilled  flower-gardeners,  either 
professional  or  amateur. 

As  the  present  century  was  coming  in,  how- 
ever, the  opportunity,  through  private  flower- 
gardening,  to  double  or  quadruple  the  town's 
beauty  and  to  do  it  without  great  trouble  or 
expense,  yet  with  great  individual  delight  and 
social  pleasure,  came  to  the  lively  notice  of  a 
number  of  us.  It  is,  then,  for  the  promotion  of 
this  object  throughout  all  our  bounds,  and  not 
for  the  perfection  of  the  art  for  its  own  sake, 
that  we  maintain  this  competition  and  award 
these  "Carnegie"  prizes.  Hence  certain  fea- 
tures of  our  method  the  value  and  necessity  of 
which  might  not  be  clear  to  the  casual  inquirer 
without  this  explanation. 

May  I  repeat  it  ?  Not  to  reward  two  or  three 
persons  yearly  for  reaching  some  dizzy  peak 
of  art  unattainable  by  ordinary  taste  and  skill, 
nor  to  reward  one  part  of  the  town  or  one  ele- 

87 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

ment  of  its  people  for  gardening  better  than 
another,  nor  to  promote  the  production  of  indi- 
vidual plants  or  flowers  of  extraordinary  splen- 
dor, nor  even  to  incite  children  to  raise  patches 
of  flowers,  is  our  design;  but  to  make  the  modest 
and  democratic  art  of  Where  to  Plant  What 
(an  art,  nevertheless,  quite  beyond  the  grasp  of 
children)  so  well  known  and  so  valued  that 
its  practical  adoption  shall  overrun  the  whole 
town. 

To  this  end  we  have  divided  our  field  into 
seven  districts,  in  each  of  which  the  number  of 
gardens  is  about  the  same.  In  each  of  these 
seven  districts  only  three  prizes  (out  of  twenty- 
one)  may  be  taken  in  any  one  season.  Conse- 
quently three  prizes  must  fall  to  each  district 
every  year.  Yet  the  best  garden  of  all  still  car- 
ries off  the  capital  prize,  the  second-best  may 
win  the  second,  and  cannot  take  a  lower  than 
the  third,  and  the  lowest  awards  go  into  the  dis- 
trict showing  the  poorest  results.  Even  this 
plan  is  so  modified  as  further  to  stimulate  those 
who  strive  against  odds  of  location  or  conditions, 
for  no  district  is  allowed  to  receive  two  prizes 

88 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

consecutive  in  the  list.  The  second  prize  can- 
not be  bestowed  in  the  same  district  in  which 
the  first  is  being  awarded,  though  the  third  can. 
The  third  cannot  go  into  the  same  district  as 
the  second,  though  the  fourth  may.  And  so  on 
to  the  twenty -first.  Moreover,  a  garden  show- 
ing much  improvement  over  the  previous  season 
may  take  a  prize,  as  against  a  better  garden 
which  shows  no  such  improvement.  Also  no 
garden  can  take  the  capital  prize  twice  nor  ever 
take  a  prize  not  higher  than  it  has  taken  before. 
The  twenty-one  prizes  are  for  those  who  hire  no 
help  in  their  gardening;  two  others  are  for  those 
who  reserve  the  liberty  to  employ  help,  and  still 
another  two  are  exclusively  for  previous  winners 
of  the  capital  prize,  competing  among  them- 
selves. In  each  of  the  five  districts  a  committee 
of  ladies  visits  the  competing  gardens,  inspecting, 
advising,  encouraging,  sometimes  learning  more 
than  they  teach,  and  reporting  to  headquarters, 
the  People's  Institute.  At  these  headquarters, 
on  two  acres  of  ground  in  the  heart  of  the  city, 
we  have  brought  gradually  into  shape,  on  a  plan 
furnished  by  Frederick  Law  Olmsted's  Sons, 

89 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

Landscape  Architects,  of  Boston  (Brookline),  a 
remarkably  handsome  garden  of  flowers  and 
shrubbery  designed  as  a  model  for  the  guidance 
of  those  in  the  competition  who  seek  to  combine 
artistic  beauty  with  inexpensiveness.  From  time 
to  time  we  have  given  at  these  headquarters 
winter  courses  of  lectures  on  practical  flower- 
gardening. 

As  a  result  we  have  improved,  and  are  still 
improving,  the  aspect  of  entire  streets  and  are 
interesting  the  whole  city. 

But  to  return  to  our  discussion.  Here  is  a 
short  story  of  two  ladies.  They  are  not  in  our 
competition,  though  among  its  most  ardent  well- 
wishers.  A  friend  had  given  one  of  them  a  bit  of 
green,  woody  growth  some  two  feet  high  and  half 
an  inch  thick.  She  had  a  wee  square  bit  of 
front  grass-plot  something  larger  than  a  table- 
cloth, but  certainly  not  large  enough  for  a  game 
of  marbles.  In  the  centre  of  this  bit  of  grass  she 
planted  her  friend's  gift.  Then  came  our  other 
lady,  making  a  call,  and  with  her  best  smile  of 
humorous  commendation,  saying: 

"My  dear,  you  have  violated  the  first  rule  of 

90 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

gardening.     You've  planted  your  bush  where 
you  wanted  it." 

The  delighted  gardener  went  in  the  strength 
of  that  witticism  for  forty  weeks  or  at  least 
until  some  fiend  of  candor,  a  brother,  like  as 
not,  said: 

"Yes,  truly  you  have  violated  the  first  rule  of 
gardening,  for  you  have  put  your  willow-tree  — 
that's  what  it  is  —  where  a  minute's  real  reflec- 
tion would  have  told  you  you'd  wish  you 
hadn't." 

Where  to  Plant  What !  Plant  it  where  you  — 
and  your  friends  —  your  friends  of  best  gar- 
dening taste  —  will  be  glad  you  planted  it  when 
all  your  things  are  planted.  Please  those  who 
know  best,  and  so  best  please  yourself.  Never- 
theless, beware  !  Watch  yourself  !  Do  so  spe- 
cially when  you  think  you  have  mastered  the 
whole  art.  Watch  even  those  who  indisputably 
know  better  than  you  do,  for  everybody  makes 
mistakes  which  he  never  would  have  dreamed 
he  could  make.  Only  the  other  day  I  heard 
an  amateur  say  to  a  distinguished  professional 
gardener: 

91 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

"Did  you  plant  those  shrubs  of  gorgeous 
flower  and  broad,  dark  leaf  out  on  your  street 
front  purely  as  a  matter  of  artistic  taste  ?  " 

"I  did,"  he  replied.  "I  wanted  to  put  my 
best  foot  foremost.  Wouldn't  you  ?  " 

"Why  should  I?"  asked  the  amateur.  "I 
wouldn't  begin  a  song  with  my  highest  note,  nor 
a  game  with  my  strongest  card,  nor  an  address 
with  my  most  impassioned  declaration,  nor  a 
sonnet  with  its  most  pregnant  line.  If  I  should, 
where  were  my  climax?" 

Certainly  the  amateur  had  the  best  of  it.  A 
garden  is  a  discourse.  A  garden  is  a  play.  See 
with  what  care  both  the  dramatist  and  the  stage- 
manager  avoid  putting  the  best  foot  foremost. 
See  how  warily  they  hold  back  the  supreme 
strength  of  the  four  or  five  act  piece  for  the 
last  act  but  one.  There  is  a  charmingly  instruct- 
ive analogy  between  a  garden  and  a  drama.  In 
each  you  have  preparation,  progress,  climax,  and 
close.  And  then,  also,  in  each  you  must  have 
your  lesser  climaxes  leading  masterfully  up  to 
the  supreme  one,  and  a  final  quiet  one  to  let 
gratefully  down  from  the  giddy  height. 

92 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

In  Northampton  nearly  all  of  our  hundreds  of 
gardens  contesting  for  prizes  are  plays  of  only 
one  or  two  acts.  I  mean  they  have  only  one  or 
two  buildings  to  garden  up  to  and  between  and 
around  and  away  from.  Yet  it  is  among  these 
one-act  plays,  these  one-house  gardens,  that  I 
find  the  art  truth  most  gracefully  emphasized, 
that  the  best  foot  should  not  go  foremost.  In  a 
large  garden  a  false  start  may  be  atoned  for  by 
better  art  farther  on  and  in;  but  in  a  small  gar- 
den, for  mere  want  of  room  and  the  chance  to 
forget,  a  bad  start  spoils  all.  No,  be  the  garden 
a  prince's  or  a  cottager's,  the  climaxes  to  be 
got  by  superiority  of  stature,  by  darkness  and 
breadth  of  foliage  and  by  splendor  of  bloom 
belong  at  its  far  end.  Even  in  the  one-house 
garden  I  should  like  to  see  the  climaxes  plural 
to  the  extent  of  two;  one  immediately  at  the  back 
of  the  house,  the  other  at  the  extreme  rear  of 
the  ground.  At  the  far  end  of  the  lot  I  would 
have  the  final  storm  of  passion  and  riot  of  dis- 
closure, and  then  close  about  the  rear  of  the 
house  there  should  be  the  things  of  supreme  rich- 
ness, exquisiteness  and  rarity. 

93 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

This  soft- voiced  echo  answering  back  out  of 
the  inmost  heart  of  the  whole  demesne  gives 
genuineness  of  sentiment  to  the  entire  scheme. 
To  plant  a  conflagration  of  color  against  the  back 
fence  and  stop  there  would  be  worse  than  melo- 
dramatic. It  would  be  to  close  the  play  with  a 
bang,  and  even  a  worthy  one-act  play  does  not 
close  with  a  bang.  The  back  of  the  lot  is  not 
the  absolute  end  of  the  garden-play.  Like  the 
stage-play,  the  garden-play  brings  its  beholder 
back  at  the  very  last,  by  a  sweet  reversion,  to 
the  point  from  which  it  started.  The  true  gar- 
den-lover gardens  not  mainly  for  the  passer-by, 
but  rather  for  himself  and  the  friends  who  come 
to  see  him.  Even  when  he  treads  his  garden 
paths  alone  he  is  a  pleased  and  welcome  visitor  to 
himself,  and  shows  his  garden  to  himself  as  to  a 
visitor.  Hence  there  is  always  at  last  a  turning 
back  to  the  house  or  to  the  front  entrance,  and 
this  is  the  play's  final  lines,  the  last  grouping  of 
the  players,  the  relief  of  all  tension  and  the 
descent  of  the  curtain. 

One  point  farther  in  this  direction  and  we  may 
give  our  hard- worked  analogy  a  respite.  It  is 

94 


"...  climaxes  to  be  got  by  superiority  of  stature,  by  darkness  and  breadth 
of  foliage  and  by  splendor  of  bloom  belong  at  its  far  end." 

Everything  in  this  photograph  was  planted  by  the  amateur  gardener  except  the  pine-trees  in 

perspective. 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

this :  as  those  who  make  and  present  a  play  take 
great  pains  that,  by  flashes  of  revelation  to  eye 
and  to  ear,  the  secrets  most  unguessed  by  the 
characters  in  the  piece  shall  be  early  revealed  to 
the  audience  and  persistently  pressed  upon  its 
attention,  so  should  the  planting  of  a  garden 
be;  that,  as  if  quite  without  the  gardener's  or 
the  garden's  knowledge,  always,  to  the  eye,  nos- 
tril or  ear,  some  clear  disclosure  of  charm  still 
remote  may  beckon  and  lure  across  easy  and 
tempting  distances  from  nook  to  nook  of  the 
small  garden,  or  from  alley  to  alley  and  from 
glade  to  glade  of  the  large  one.  Where  to 
Plant  What  ?  Plant  it  as  far  away  as,  according 
to  the  force  of  its  character  or  the  splendor  of  its 
charms,  it  can  stand  and  beckon  back  with  best 
advantage  for  the  whole  garden. 

Thus  we  generalize.  And  as  long  as  one  may 
generalize  he  is  comparatively  safe  from  humil- 
iating criticism.  It  is  only  when  he  begins  to 
name  things  by  name  and  say  what  is  best  for 
just  where,  that  he  touches  the  naked  eyeball  (or 
the  funny-bone)  of  others  whose  crotchets  are  not 
identical  with  his.  Yet  in  Northampton  this 

95 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

is  what  we  have  to  do,  and  since  the  competitors 
for  our  prizes  always  have  the  Where  before  they 
are  moved  to  get  and  place  the  What,  we  find 
our  where-and-what  problem  easiest  to  handle 
when  we  lift  it,  so  to  speak,  by  the  tail.  Then 
it  is  "What  to  Plant  Where,"  and  for  answer 
we  have  made  a  short  list  of  familiar  flowering 
shrubs  best  suited  to  our  immediate  geographical 
locality.  We  name  only  fourteen  and  we  so 
describe  each  as  to  indicate  clearly  enough,  with- 
out dictating,  whereabouts  to  put  it.  We  begin: 
"Azalea.  Our  common  wild  azalea  is  the 
flowering  bush  best  known  as  'swamp  honey- 
suckle.' The  two  azaleas  listed  here,  A.  mollis 
and  the  Ghent  varieties,  are  of  large,  beautiful 
and  luxuriant  bloom,  and  except  the  'swamp 
honeysuckle'  are  the  only  azaleas  hardy  in 
western  Massachusetts.  Mollis  is  from  two  to 
six  feet  high,  three  to  six  feet  broad,  and  blooms 
in  April  and  May.  Its  blossoms  are  yellow, 
orange  or  pink,  single  or  double.  Its  soil  may 
be  sandy  or  peaty,  and  moist,  but  any  good  gar- 
den soil  will  serve;  its  position  partly  shaded  or 
in  full  sunlight.  The  Ghents  are  somewhat 

96 


"Some  clear  disclosure  of  charm  still  remote  may  beckon  and  lure." 

From  a  photograph  taken  on  My  Own  Acre,  showing  how  I  pulled  the  lawn  in  under  the 
trees.  The  big  chestnuts  in  the  middle  are  on  the  old  fence  line  that  stood  on  the  very 
edge  of  the  precipitously  falling  ground.  All  the  ground  in  sight  in  the  picture  is  a  fill. 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

taller  and  not  so  broad  in  proportion.  They 
bloom  from  May  to  July,  and  their  blossoms  are 
white,  yellow,  orange,  pink,  carmine,  or  red, 
single  or  double.  Soil  and  position  about  the 
same  as  for  mollis. 

"Berberis.  Berberis  is  the  barberry,  so  well 
known  by  its  beautiful  pendent  berries.  It  is 
one  of  the  best  shrubs  to  use  where  a  thorny 
bush  is  wanted.  B.  vulgaris,  the  common  sort, 
and  one  of  the  most  beautiful,  grows  from  four 
to  eight  feet  high,  with  a  breadth  of  from  three 
to  six  feet.  B.  Thunbergii,  or  Thunberg's  bar- 
berry, is  the  well-known  Japanese  variety,  a 
dense,  drooping  bush  from  two  to  four  feet 
high  and  somewhat  greater  breadth.  Its  pale- 
yellow  blossoms  come  in  April  and  May,  and 
its  small,  slender,  bright-red  berries  remain  on 
the  spray  until  spring.  A  dry  soil  is  the  best  for 
it,  though  it  will  grow  in  any,  and  needs  little 
shade  or  none.  B.  purpurea  is  a  variety  of  vul- 
garis  and  is  as  handsome  as  the  common.  It 
answers  to  the  same  description,  except  that  its 
foliage  is  purple,  which  makes  it  very  tempting 
to  new  gardeners,  but  very  hard  to  relate  in  good 

97 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

artistic  taste  among  the  other  shrubs  of  the  gar- 
den. Few  small  gardens  can  make  good  use  of 
purple  foliage. 

"Deutzia  gracilis.  The  gracilis  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  of  all  the  deutzias.  Its  delicate 
foliage  of  rather  light  green,  its  snowy  flowers 
and  its  somewhat  bending  form,  make  it  one  of 
the  fairest  ornaments  of  the  home  grounds.  Its 
height  is  three  feet,  its  breadth  from  two  to  four 
feet.  It  blooms  in  May  and  June.  Its  soil  may 
be  any  well-drained  sort,  and  its  position  any 
slightly  sheltered  aspect." 

So  we  hurry  down  the  alphabet.  The  list  is 
short  for  several  good  reasons,  one  being  that 
it  is  well  to  give  other  lists  from  season  to  sea- 
son. No  doubt  our  inaccuracies  would  distress  a 
botanist  or  scientific  gardener,  but  we  convey 
the  information,  such  as  it  is,  to  our  fellow 
citizens,  and  they  use  it.  In  the  last  ten  years 
we  have  furnished  to  our  amateurs  thousands  of 
shrubs  and  plants,  at  the  same  reduced  rates  for 
a  few  specimens  each  which  we  pay  for  them  by 
the  hundred. 

But  of  the  really  good  sorts  are  there  shrubs 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

enough,  you  ask,  to  afford  new  lists  year  after 
year  ?  Well,  for  the  campus  of  a  certain  prepara- 
tory school  for  boys,  with  the  planting  of  which 
the  present  writer  had  somewhat  to  do  a  few 
years  ago,  the  list  of  shrubs  set  round  the  bases 
of  four  large  buildings  and  several  hundred 
yards  of  fence  numbered  seventy-five  kinds. 
To  end  the  chapter,  let  us  say  something  about 
that  operation.  On  a  pictorial  page  or  two  we 
give  ourselves  the  pleasure  of  showing  the  results 
of  this  undertaking;  but  first,  both  by  pictures 
and  by  verbal  description  let  me  show  where  we 
planted  what.  Of  course  we  made  sundry  mis- 
takes. Each  thing  we  did  may  be  vulnerable  to 
criticism,  and  our  own  largest  hope  is  that  our 
results  may  not  fall  entirely  beneath  that  sort 
of  compliment. 

This  campus  covers  some  five  acres  in  the 
midst  of  a  small  town.  Along  three  of  its 
boundaries  old  maples  and  elms,  in  ordinary 
single-file  shade- tree  lines,  tower  and  spread. 
On  the  fourth  line,  the  rear  bound,  a  board  fence 
divides  the  ground  from  the  very  unattractive 
back  yards,  stables  and  sheds  of  a  number  of 

99 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

town  residents.  The  front  lies  along  the  main 
street  of  the  place,  facing  the  usual  "  shop-row." 
The  entire  area  has  nearly  always  been  grassed. 
Not  what  an  Englishman  would  call  so,  but 
turfed  in  a  stuttering  fashion,  impetuous  and 
abashed  by  turns,  and  very  easy  to  keep  off; 
most  rank  up  against  the  granite  underpinnings 
of  the  buildings,  and  managing  somehow  to 
writhe  to  all  the  fences,  of  which  those  on  the 
street  fronts  are  of  iron.  Parallel  with  the  front 
fence  and  some  fifty  feet  behind  it,  three  of  the 
institution's  buildings  stand  abreast  and  about 
a  hundred  feet  apart.  All  three  are  tall,  rect- 
angular three-story  piles  of  old  red  brick,  on 
granite  foundations,  and  full  of  windows  all  of 
one  size,  pigeon-house  style.  The  middle  one 
has  a  fairly  good  Greek-pillared  porch,  of  wood, 
on  the  middle  half  of  its  front. 

Among  these  buildings  we  began  our  planting. 
We  had  drawn,  of  course,  a  ground  plan  of  the 
whole  place,  to  scale,  showing  each  ground-floor 
door  and  window,  so  that  we  might  respect  its 
customary  or  projected  use.  A  great  point,  that, 
in  Where  to  Plant  What.  I  once  heard  of  a 

100 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

school  whose  small  boys  were  accused  of  wan- 
tonly trampling  down  some  newly  set  shrubs  on 
the  playground.  "Well,"  demanded  one  brave 
urchin,  "what  made  'em  go  and  plant  a  lot  of 
bushes  right  on  first  base?"  And  no  one  was 
ready  with  an  answer,  for  there  is  something 
morally  wrong  about  any  garden  that  will  rob  a 
boy  of  his  rights. 

With  this  ground  plan  before  us  we  decided 
indoors  where  to  plant  what  outdoors  and  cal- 
culated arithmetically  the  number  of  each  sort  of 
shrub  we  should  need  for  the  particular  interval 
we  designed  that  sort  to  fill.  Our  scheme  of  ar- 
rangement was  a  crescendo  of  foliage  and  flower 
effects,  beginning  on  the  fronts  of  the  buildings 
and  rising  toward  their  rears,  while  at  all  points 
making  more  of  foliage  than  of  bloom,  because 
the  bloom  shows  for  only  a  month  or  less,  while 
the  leaf  remains  for  seven  or  more.  Beginning 
thus  with  our  quietest  note,  the  interest  of  any 
one  looking  in,  or  coming  in,  from  the  public 
front  is  steadily  quickened  and  progressively  re- 
warded, while  the  crowning  effects  at  the  rear 
of  the  buildings  are  reserved  for  the  crowning 

101 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

moment  when  the  visitor  may  be  said  to  be  fully 
received.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  approach  is 
a  returning  one  from  the  rear  of  the  entire 
campus,  —  where  stands  the  institution's  only 
other  building,  a  large  tall-towered  gymnasium, 
also  of  red  brick,  —  these  superlative  effects 
show  out  across  an  open  grassy  distance  of  from 
two  hundred  to  three  hundred  feet. 

Wherefore  —  and  here  at  last  we  venture  to 
bring  names  of  things  and  their  places  together 
—  at  the  fronts  of  the  northernmost  and  south- 
ernmost of  these  three  "Halls"  we  set  favorite 
varieties  of  white-flowering  spireas  (Thunbergia, 
sorbif olia,  arguta,  Van  Houttei),i}ie  pearl-bush  (ex~ 
ochorda),  pink  diervillas,  and  flowering-almonds. 
After  these,  on  the  southern  side  of  the  south- 
ernmost building,  for  example,  followed  lilacs, 
white  and  purple,  against  the  masonry,  —  the 
white  against  the  red  brick,  the  lilac  tint 
well  away  from  it,  —  with  tamarisk  and  kerria 
outside,  abreast  of  them,  and  then  pink  and  red 
spireas  (Bumaldi  and  its  dwarf  variety,  An- 
thony Water er).  On  the  other  side  of  the  same 
house  we  set  deutzias  (scabra  against  the  brick- 

102 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

work  and  Lemoynei  and  gracilis  outside).  In  a 
wing  corner,  where  melting  snows  crash  down 
from  a  roof -valley,  we  placed  the  purple-flowered 
Lespedeza  penduliflorum,  which  each  year  dies 
to  the  ground  before  the  snow-slides  come,  yet 
each  September  blooms  from  three  to  four  feet 
high  in  drooping  profusion.  Then  from  that 
angle  to  the  rear  corner  we  put  in  a  mass  of 
pink  wild  roses.  Lastly,  on  the  tall,  doorless, 
windowless  rear  end,  we  planted  the  crimson- 
rambler  rose,  and  under  it  a  good  hundred  of 
the  red  rugosas. 

In  the  arrangement  of  these  plantings  we 
found  ourselves  called  upon  to  deal  with  a  very 
attractive  and,  to  us,  new  phase  of  our  question. 
The  rising  progression  from  front  to  rear  was  a 
matter  of  course,  but  how  about  the  progression 
at  right  angles  to  it;  from  building  to  build- 
ing, that  is,  of  these  three  so  nearly  alike  in 
size  and  dignity  ?  To  the  passer-by  along  their 
Main  Street  front  —  the  admiring  passer-by,  as 
we  hope  —  should  there  be  no  augmentation  of 
charm  in  the  direction  of  his  steps?  And  if 
there  should  be,  then  where  and  how  ought  it  to 

103 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

show  forth  so  as  to  avoid  an  anticlimax  to  one 
passing  along  the  same  front  from  the  opposite 
direction  ?  We  promptly  saw,  —  as  the  reader 
sees,  no  doubt,  before  we  can  tell  it,  —  that  what 
we  wanted  was  two  crescendos  meeting  some- 
where near  the  middle;  a  crescendo  passing  into 
a  diminuendo  from  whichever  end  you  moved 
to  the  other  —  a  swell.  We  saw  that  our  loud- 
pedal  effect  should  come  upon  "Middle  Hall." 
So  there,  on  its  lucky  bit  of  Greek  porch,  we 
bestowed  the  purple  wistaria  for  spring,  and  for 
late  summer  that  fragrant  snowdrift,  the  clema- 
tis paniculata,  so  adapted  as  to  festoon  and 
chaplet,  but  never  to  smother,  the  Greek  col- 
umns. On  one  of  this  structure's  sides  we 
planted  forsythia,  backed  closer  against  the 
masonry  by  althaeas,  with  the  low  and  ex- 
quisite mahonia  (holly-leafed  barberry)  under 
its  outer  spread.  On  the  other  side  of  the  house 
we  placed,  first,  loniceras  (bush  honeysuckles); 
next,  azaleas,  in  variety  and  profusion;  then, 
toward  the  rear  end,  a  mass  of  hardy  hydrangeas 
(Hydrangea  paniculata  grandiflora) ,  and  at  the 
very  back  of  the  pile  another  mass,  of  the  flower- 

104 


WHERE    TO    PLANT    WHAT 

ing-quince  (Pyrus  japonica),  with  the  trumpet- 
creeper  (Tecoma  radicans),  to  climb  out  of  it. 

About  "North  Hall,"  the  third  building,  we 
planted  more  quietly,  and  most  quietly  on  its 
outer,  its  northern,  side  where  our  lateral 
"swell"  (rising  effect)  begins,  or  ends,  accord- 
ing to  the  direction  of  your  going,  beginning 
with  that  modest  but  pretty  bloomer  the  Ligus- 
trum  ibota,  a  perfectly  hardy  privet  more  grace- 
ful than  the  California  (ovalifolium)  species, 
which  really  has  little  business  in  icy  New  Eng- 
land away  from  the  seashore. 

I  might  have  remarked  before  that  nearly  all 
the  walls  of  these  three  buildings,  as  well  as  the 
gymnasium  on  the  far  side  of  the  campus,  were 
already  adorned  with  the  "Boston  ivy"  (Am- 
pelopsis  Veitchii).  With  the  plantings  thus  de- 
scribed, and  with  the  gymnasium  surrounded 
by  yet  stronger  greenery;  with  the  back  fence 
masked  by  willows,  elders  and  red-stemmed 
cornus;  and  with  a  number  of  haphazard  foot- 
paths reduced  to  an  equally  convenient  and  far 
more  graceful  few,  our  scheme  stands  complete 
in  its  first,  but  only,  please  notice,  its  first,  phase. 

105 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

The  picture  is  submitted  to  your  imagination 
not  as  it  looked  the  day  we  ceased  planting,  but 
as  we  expected  it  to  appear  after  a  season  or 
two,  and  as  it  does  look  now. 

At  present,  rather  tardily,  we  have  begun 
to  introduce  herbaceous  flowering  perennials, 
which  we  ignored  in  the  first  part  of  our  plan, 
because  herbaceous  plants  are  the  flesh  and 
blood  and  garments  of  a  complete  living  and 
breathing  garden;  the  walls,  shrubs,  trees,  walks 
and  drives  are  its  bones.  When  this  secondary 
phase  has  been  more  fully  realized  and  we  have 
placed  bush-clumps  and  tree-clumps  out  on  the 
open  campus,  and  when  our  hundreds  of  cottage 
gardens  are  shaking  off  the  prison  irons  of  frost, 
we  hope,  if  you  cannot  do  us  the  honor  to  be 
with  us  bodily,  your  spirit  may  be  near,  aiding 
us  on  in  the  conquest  of  this  ever  beautiful 
Where-to-Plant-What  problem,  which  I  believe 
would  make  us  a  finer  and  happier  nation  if  it 
could  be  expanded  to  national  proportions. 


106 


THE    COTTAGE    GARDENS    OF 
NORTHAMPTON 


THE    COTTAGE    GARDENS    OF 
NORTHAMPTON 

A 3AM  and  Eve,  it  is  generally  conceded, 
were  precocious.  They  entered  into  the 
cares  and  joys  of  adult  life  at  an  earlier  age  than 
any  later  human  prodigy.  We  call  them  the 
grand  old  gardener  and  his  wife,  but,  in  fact, 
they  were  the  youngest  gardeners  the  world  has 
ever  seen,  and  they  really  did  not  give  entire 
satisfaction.  How  could  they  without  tools  ? 

Let  it  pass.  The  whole  allusion  is  prompted 
only  by  the  thought  that  youth  does  not  spon- 
taneously garden.  If  it  was  actually  necessary 
that  our  first  parents  should  begin  life  as  gar- 
deners, that  fully  explains  why  they  had  to  begin 
it  also  as  adults.  Youth  enjoys  the  garden, 
yes  !  but  not  its  making  or  tending.  Childhood, 
the  abecedarian,  may  love  to  plant  seeds,  to 
watch  them  spring,  grow,  and  flower,  and  to 
help  them  do  so;  but  that  is  the  merest  a-b-c  of 

109 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

gardening,  and  no  more  makes  him  an  ama- 
teur in  the  art  than  spelling  words  of  one  letter 
makes  him  a  poet.  One  may  raise  or  love 
flowers  for  a  lifetime,  yet  never  in  any  art  sense 
become  a  gardener. 

In  front  of  the  main  building  of  a  public  in- 
stitution which  we  must  presently  mention  again 
there  is  a  sloping  strip  of  sward  a  hundred  feet 
long  and  some  fifteen  wide.  A  florist  of  fully  half 
a  century's  experience  one  day  halted  beside  it 
and  exclaimed  to  the  present  writer,  "Only  say 
the  word,  and  I'll  set  out  the  'ole  len'th  o'  that 
strip  in  foliage-plants  a-spellin'  o'  the  name: 
'People's  Hinstitute!'"  Yet  that  gentle  en- 
thusiast advertised  himself  as  a  landscape- 
gardener  and  got  clients.  For  who  was  there  to 
tell  them  or  him  that  he  was  not  one  ? 

Not  only  must  we  confess  that  youth  does  not 
spontaneously  garden,  but  that  our  whole  Amer- 
ican civilization  is  still  so  lingeringly  in  its  non- 
gardening  youth  that  only  now  and  then,  here 
and  there,  does  it  realize  that  a  florist,  whether 
professional  or  amateur,  or  even  a  nurseryman, 
is  not  necessarily  a  constructive  gardener,  or 

110 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

that  artistic  gardening,  however  informal,  is 
nine-tenths  constructive. 

Yet  particularly  because  such  gardening  is  so, 
and  because  some  of  its  finest  rewards  are  so 
slow-coming  and  long-abiding,  there  is  no  stage 
of  life  in  which  it  is  so  reasonable  for  man  or 
woman  to  love  and  practise  the  art  as  when 
youth  is  in  its  first  full  stature  and  may  garden 
for  itself  and  not  merely  for  posterity.  "John," 
said  his  aged  father  to  one  of  our  living  poets, 
"I  know  now  how  to  transplant  full-grown  trees 
successfully.  Do  it  a  long  time  ago."  Let  the 
stripling  plant  the  sapling. 

Youth,  however,  and  especially  our  American 
youth,  has  his  or  her  excuses,  such  as  they  are. 
Of  the  garden  or  the  place  to  be  gardened,  "It's 
not  mine,"  he  or  she  warmly  says;  "it's  only  my 
father's,"  or  "my  mother's." 

Young  man !  Young  maiden !  True,  the 
place,  so  pathetically  begging  to  be  gardened, 
may  not  be  your  future  home,  may  never  be 
your  property,  and  it  is  right  enough  that  a 
feeling  for  ownership  should  begin  to  shape  your 
daily  life.  But  let  it  not  misshape  it.  You 

111 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

know  that  ownership  is  not  all  of  life  nor  the 
better  half  of  it,  and  it  is  quite  as  good  for  you 
to  give  the  fact  due  recognition  by  gardening 
early  in  life  as  it  was  for  Adam  and  Eve. 

It  is  better,  for  you  can  do  so  in  a  much  more 
fortunate  manner,  having  tools  and  the  first 
pair's  warning  example.  It  is  better  also  be- 
cause you  can  do  what  to  them  was  impossible; 
you  can  make  gardening  a  concerted  public 
movement. 

That  is  what  we  have  made  it  in  Northamp- 
ton, Massachusetts,  whose  curving  streets  and 
ancient  elms  you  may  have  heard  of  as  making 
it  very  garden-like  in  its  mere  layout;  many  of 
whose  windows,  piazzas,  and  hillside  lawns  look 
off  across  the  beautiful  Connecticut,  winding 
broadly  among  its  farmed  meadows  and  vanish- 
ing southward  through  the  towering  gateway 
made  for  or  by  it  millenniums  ago  between 
Mounts  Tom  and  Holyoke. 

There  Smith  College  is,  as  well  as  that  "Peo- 
ple's Institute"  aforementioned,  and  it  is  through 
that  institute,  one  of  whose  several  branches  of 
work  is  carried  on  wholly  by  Smith  College  stu- 

112 


1  I 


IS 


bC    < 

II 

5  1 


.i  1 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

dents,  that  we,  the  Northampton  townspeople, 
established  and  maintain  another  branch,  our 
concerted  gardening. 

One  evening  in  September  a  company  of 
several  hundred  persons  gathered  in  the  main 
hall  of  the  institute's  " Carnegie  House"  to  wit- 
ness and  receive  the  prize  awards  of  their  twelfth 
annual  flower-garden  competition. 

The  place  was  filled.  A  strong  majority  of 
those  present  were  men  and  women  who  earn 
their  daily  bread  with  their  hands.  The  whole 
population  of  Northampton  is  but  twenty  thou- 
sand or  so,  and  the  entire  number  of  its  voters 
hardly  exceeds  four  thousand,  yet  there  were  one 
thousand  and  thirteen  gardens  in  the  competi- 
tion, the  gardens  of  that  many  homes;  and 
although  children  had  taken  part  in  the  care  of 
many  of  them,  and  now  were  present  to  see 
the  prizes  go  to  their  winners,  not  one  was  sepa- 
rately a  child's  garden.  By  a  rule  of  the  con- 
test, each  garden  had  been  required  to  comprise 
the  entire  home  lot,  with  the  dwelling  for  its 
dominating  feature  and  the  family  its  spiritual 
unit. 

113 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

The  ceremony  of  award  began  with  the  lowest 
cash  prize  and  moved  steadily  up  to  the  second 
and  first,  these  two  being  accompanied  by  bril- 
liantly illuminated  diplomas,  and  as  each  award 
was  bestowed,  the  whole  gathering  of  winners 
and  non-winners  —  for  no  one  could  be  called 
a  loser  —  sounded  their  congratulations  by  a 
hearty  clapping  of  hands.  They  had  made  the 
matter  a  public,  concerted  movement,  and  were 
interested  in  its  results  and  rewards  as  spiritual 
proprietors  in  a  common  possession  much  wider 
than  mere  personal  ownership  under  the  law. 

This  wider  sentiment  of  community,  so  valu- 
able to  the  whole  public  interest,  was  further 
promoted  by  the  combining  of  nearly  two  hun- 
dred of  these  same  gardens  in  "neighborhood 
garden  clubs"  of  seven  or  more  gardens  each, 
every  garden  in  each  club  directly  adjoining  an- 
other, and  the  clubs  competing  for  prizes  of  so 
much  a  garden  to  the  best  and  second-best  clubs. 

Yet  none  the  less  for  all  this,  but  much  more,  a 
great  majority  of  the  multitude  of  home  garden- 
ers represented  by  this  gathering  were  enjoying 
also  —  each  home  pair  through  their  own  home 

114 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

garden  —  the  pleasures  of  personal  ownership 
and  achievement. 

Many  of  the  prize-winners  were  young,  but 
many  were  gray,  and  some  were  even  aged,  yet 
all  alike  would  have  testified  that  even  for  age, 
and  so  all  the  more  for  youth,  artistic  flower- 
gardening  is  as  self -rewarding  a  form  of  unselfish 
work  and  as  promptly  rewarding  a  mode  of  wait- 
ing on  the  future  as  can  easily  be  found;  that 
there  is  no  more  beautifully  rewarding  way  by 
which  youth  may 

"  Learn  to  labor  and  to  wait." 

Maybe  that  is  why  Adam  and  Eve  were  appren- 
ticed to  it  so  very  young. 

It  should  have  been  said  before  that  in  advance 
of  the  award  of  prizes  some  very  pleasant  music 
and  song  were  given  from  the  platform  by  a  few 
Smith  College  girls,  and  that  then  the  company 
were  shown  stereopticon  pictures  of  a  number  of 
their  own  gardens  as  they  looked  during  the  past 
summer  and  as  they  had  looked  when,  a  few 
years  ago,  —  although  seemingly  but  yesterday, 
—  their  owners  began  to  plan  and  to  plant. 

115 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

The  contrasts  were  amazing  and  lent  great 
emphasis  to  the  two  or  three  truths  we  have 
here  dwelt  on  probably  long  enough.  To  wit: 
first,  that,  as  a  rule,  all  true  gardeners  are  grown- 
ups; second,  that  therein  lies  the  finest  value  of 
concerted  gardening;  third,  that  the  younger 
the  grown-up  the  better,  for  the  very  reason 
that  the  crowning  recompenses  of  true  gardening 
come  surely,  but  come  late;  and  fourth,  that, 
nevertheless,  gardening  yields  a  lovely  ampli- 
tude of  immediate  rewards. 

For  instance,  this  gathering  in  our  People's 
Institute  also,  before  the  announcement  of  prizes, 
took  delight  in  hearing  reported  the  aggregate 
of  the  flowers,  mostly  of  that  season's  planting, 
distributed  by  a  considerable  number  of  the 
competitors  to  the  shut-in  and  the  bereaved. 
This  feature  of  the  movement  had  been  begun 
only  the  previous  year,  and  its  total  was  no  more 
than  some  three  thousand  dozens  of  flowers;  but 
many  grateful  acknowledgments,  both  verbal 
and  written,  prove  that  it  gave  solace  and  joy 
to  many  hearts  and  we  may  call  it  a  good 
beginning. 

116 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

A  garden  should  be  owned  not  to  be  monopo- 
lized, but  to  be  shared,  as  a  song  is  owned  not 
to  be  hushed,  but  to  be  sung;  and  the  wide  giving 
of  its  flowers  is  but  one  of  several  ways  in  which 
a  garden  may  sing  or  be  sung  —  for  the  garden 
is  both  song  and  singer.  At  any  rate  it  cannot 
help  but  be  a  public  benefaction  and  a  public 
asset,  if  only  its  art  be  true. 

Hence  one  of  the  values  of  our  gardening  in 
Northampton:  making  the  gardens  so  many  and 
so  artistically  true  and  good,  it  makes  the  town, 
as  a  whole,  more  interesting  and  pleasing  to 
itself,  and  in  corresponding  degree  the  better 
to  live  in.  Possibly  there  may  be  some  further 
value  in  telling  here  how  we  do  it. 

As  soon  as  signs  of  spring  are  plain  to  the  gen- 
eral eye  the  visiting  for  enrolment  begins.  A 
secretary  of  the  institute  sets  out  to  canvass  such 
quarters  of  the  field  as  have  not  been  appor- 
tioned among  themselves  individually  by  the 
ladies  composing  the  committee  of  "volunteer 
garden  visitors."  At  the  same  time  these  ladies 
begin  their  calls,  some  undertaking  more,  some 
less,  according  to  each  one's  willingness  or  ability. 

117 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

This  first  round  consists  merely  in  enrolling 
the  competitors  by  name,  street,  and  number 
and  in  sending  these  registrations  in  to  the  in- 
stitute. Later,  by  the  same  ladies,  the  same 
ground  is  more  or  less  gone  over  again  in  visits 
of  observation,  inquiry  and  counsel,  and  once 
a  month  throughout  the  season  the  ladies  meet 
together  with  the  president  of  the  institute  to 
report  the  conditions  and  sentiments  encoun- 
tered and  to  plan  further  work. 

The  importance  of  these  calls  is  not  confined 
to  the  advancement  of  good  gardening.  They 
promote  fellowship  among  neighbors  and  kind 
feeling  between  widely  parted  elements  of  so- 
ciety. Last  year  this  committee  made  nearly 
eleven  hundred  such  visits. 

Meanwhile  a  circular  letter  has  been  early 
mailed  to  the  previous  year's  competitors,  urging 
them  to  re-enroll  by  post-card.  Last  year  hun- 
dreds did  so.  Meanwhile,  too,  as  soon  as  the 
enrolment  is  completed,  the  institute's  general 
secretary  begins  a  tour  of  official  inspection,  and 
as  he  is  an  experienced  teacher  of  his  art,  his  in- 
spections are  expert.  His  errand  is  known  by 

118 


COTTAGE    GARDENS 

the  time  he  is  in  sight,  and,  as  a  rule,  the  house- 
holder joins  him  in  a  circuit  of  the  place,  show- 
ing achievements,  reciting  difficulties  and  dis- 
appointments, confessing  errors,  and  taking  tact- 
ful advice. 

And  what  room  he  finds  for  tact !  He  sees  a 
grave-like  bed  of  verbenas  defacing  the  middle 
of  a  small  greensward  —  a  dab  of  rouge  on  a 
young  cheek;  a  pert  child  doing  all  the  talking. 
Whereupon  he  shrewdly  pleads  not  for  the 
sward  but  for  the  flowers,  "You  have  those  there 
to  show  off  at  their  best  ?  " 

"Yes.     Don't  they  do  it?" 

"Not  quite."  He  looks  again.  "Nine  feet 
long  —  five  wide.  If  you'll  plant  them  next 
year  in  a  foot-wide  ribbon  under  that  border  of 
stronger  things  along  your  side  boundary  they'll 
give  you  at  least  forty  feet  of  color  instead  of 
nine,  and  they'll  illuminate  your  bit  of  sward 
instead  of  eclipsing  it." 

In  another  garden  he  says,  "Splendid  sun- 
burst of  color,  that  big  tub  of  geraniums !"  and 
the  householder  is  pleased  to  admit  the  fact. 
"If  you'd  sink  the  tub  into  the  ground  clear  down 

119 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

to  the  rim  they'd  take  up  no  more  room  and 
they'd  look  natural.  Besides,  you  wouldn't 
have  to  water  them  continually." 

"That's  true!"  says  the  householder,  quite 
in  the  incredible  way  of  an  old-fashioned  book. 
"I'll  do  it!" 

"And  then,"  says  the  caller,  "if  you  will  set 
it  away  off  on  that  far  corner  of  the  lawn  it 
will  shine  clear  across,  showing  everything  be- 
tween here  and  there,  like  a  lighthouse  across  a 
harbor,  or  like  a  mirror,  which  you  hang  not  in 
your  parlor  door,  but  at  the  far  end  of  the  room." 

"When  you  come  back  you  shall  see  it  there," 
is  the  reply. 

Sometimes,  yet  not  often,  a  contestant  is  met 
who  does  not  want  advice,  and  who  can  hardly 
hide  his  scorn  for  book  statements  and  experts. 
The  present  writer  came  upon  one  last  year 
who  "could  not  see  what  beauty  there  was  in 
John  Smith's  garden,  yet  we  had  given  him  and 
his  wife  the  capital  prize  !" 

Frequently  one  finds  the  house  of  a  com- 
petitor fast  locked  and  dumb,  its  occupants 
being  at  work  in  some  mill  or  shop.  Then  if  the 

120 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

visit  is  one  of  official  inspection  a  card  stating 
that  fact  and  dated  and  signed  on  the  spot  is 
left  under  the  door,  and  on  its  reverse  side  the 
returning  householder  finds  printed  the  fol- 
lowing: 

"In  marking  for  merit  your  whole  place  is 
considered  your  garden.  It  is  marked  on  four 
points:  (1)  Its  layout,  or  ground  plan;  (2)  its 
harmonies  —  of  arrangement  as  to  color  of 
blooms  and  as  to  form  and  size  of  trees,  shrubs 
and  plants;  (3)  its  condition  —  as  to  the  neatness 
and  order  of  everything;  and  (4)  its  duration  — 
from  how  early  in  the  year  to  how  late  it  will 
make  a  pleasing  show. 

"Mow  your  lawn  as  often  as  the  mower  will 
cut  the  grass,  but  also  keep  it  thoroughly  weeded. 
As  a  rule,  in  laying  out  your  plantings  avoid 
straight  lines  and  hard  angles;  the  double  curve, 
or  wave  line,  is  the  line  of  grace.  Plant  all  the 
flowers  you  wish,  few  or  many,  but  set  shrubs 
at  their  back  to  give  stronger  and  more  lasting 
effects  when  the  flowers  are  out  of  season  as  well 
as  while  they  are  in  bloom. 

"Try  to  plant  so  as  to  make  your  whole  place 
121 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

one  single  picture  of  a  home,  with  the  house 
the  chief  element  and  the  boundary -lines  of  the 
lot  the  frame.  Plant  on  all  your  lot's  bound- 
aries, plant  out  the  foundation-lines  of  all  its 
buildings;  but  between  these  plantings  keep  the 
space  grassed  only,  and  open.  In  these  house 
and  boundary  borders  let  your  chief  plantings 
be  shrubs,  and  so  have  a  nine  months'  instead  of 
a  three  months'  garden." 

The  secretary's  tour  completed  and  his  score 
of  all  the  gardens  tabulated,  a  list  is  drawn 
from  it  of  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  best  gar- 
dens, and  a  second  circuit  of  counsel  and  in- 
spection, limited  to  this  greatly  reduced  number, 
is  made  by  the  president  of  the  institute,  who 
marks  them  again  on  the  same  four  points  of 
merit. 

These  two  markings,  averaged,  determine  the 
standing  of  all  prize-winning  gardens  except  the 
leading  four.  Then  the  president  calls  in  one 
professional  and  one  amateur  expert,  visits  with 
them  as  many  of  the  most  promising  contestants 
as  can  be  seen  in  an  afternoon's  drive,  and  with 
them  decides  the  award  of  the  four  highest  prizes. 


"Plant  on  all  your  lot's  boundaries,  plant  out  the  foundation-lines  of  all  its 

buildings." 

A  secluded  back  corner  of  a  prize-winner's  garden  which  shows  how  slight  a  planting  may 
redeem  the  homeliness  of  an  old  fence. 


"Not  chiefly  to  reward  the  highest  art  in  gardening,  but  to  procure  its 

widest  and  most  general  dissemination." 
A  cheap  apartment  row  whose  landlord  had  its  planting  done  by  the  People's  Institute. 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

That  is  all.  When  we  have  given  two  or 
three  lesser  items  our  story  is  told  —  for  what  it 
is  worth.  It  is  well  to  say  we  began  small;  in 
our  first  season,  fifteen  years  ago,  our  whole  roll 
of  competitors  numbered  but  sixty.  It  is  the 
visiting  that  makes  the  difference;  last  season 
these  visits,  volunteer  and  official,  were  more 
than  thirty-one  hundred. 

Another  source  of  our  success  we  believe  to  be 
the  fact  that  our  prizes  are  many  and  the  leading 
ones  large  —  fifteen,  twelve,  nine  dollars,  and  so 
on  down.  Prizes  and  all,  the  whole  movement 
costs  a  yearly  cash  outlay  of  less  than  three  hun- 
dred dollars;  without  the  People's  Institute  at 
its  back  it  could  still  be  done  for  five  hundred. 

And  now,  this  being  told  in  the  hope  that  it 
may  incite  others,  and  especially  youth,  to  make 
experiments  like  it  elsewhere,  to  what  impulse 
shall  we  appeal  ? 

Will  it  not  suffice  if  we  invoke  that  adolescent 
instinct  which  moves  us  to  merge  our  individual 
life  —  to  consolidate  it,  as  the  stock-manipulators 
say  —  in  the  world's  one  great  life,  our  "celes- 
tial selfishness"  being  intuitively  assured  that 

123 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

our  own  priceless  individuality  will  gain,  not 
lose,  thereby? 

Or  shall  we  make  our  plea  to  an  "art  im- 
pulse"? No?  Is  the  world  already  artificial 
enough?  Not  by  half,  although  it  is  full, 
crammed,  with  the  things  the  long-vanished 
dead  have  done  for  it  in  every  art,  from  cameos 
to  shade-trees;  done  for  it  because  it  was  al- 
ready so  fair  that,  live  long  or  die  soon,  they 
could  not  hold  themselves  back  from  making  it 
fairer. 

Yet,  all  that  aside,  is  not  this  concerted  gar- 
dening precisely  such  a  work  that  young  man- 
hood and  womanhood,  however  artificial  or  un- 
artificial,  anywhere,  everywhere,  Old  World  or 
newest  frontier,  ought  to  take  to  naturally? 
Adam  and  Eve  did,  and  they  —  but  we  have 
squeezed  Adam  and  Eve  dry  enough. 

Patriotism !  Can  you  imagine  a  young  man 
or  woman  without  it?  And  if  you  are  young 
and  a  lover  of  your  country,  do  you  not  love 
its  physical  aspects,  "its  rocks  and  rills,  its 
woods  and  templed  hills"?  And  if  so,  do  you 
love  only  those  parts  of  it  which  you  never  see 

124 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

and  the  appearance  of  which  you  have  no  power 
to  modify  ?  Or  do  you  love  the  land  only  and 
not  the  people,  the  nation,  the  government? 
Or,  loving  these,  have  you  no  love  for  the  near- 
est public  fraction  of  it,  your  own  town  and 
neighbors?  Why,  then,  your  love  of  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  is  the  flattest,  silliest  idolatry;  so 
flat  and  silly  it  is  hardly  worth  chiding.  Your 
patriotism  is  a  patriotism  for  war  only,  and  a 
country  with  only  that  kind  is  never  long  with- 
out war. 

You  see  the  difference?  Patriotism  for  war 
generalizes.  A  patriotism  for  peace  particu- 
larizes, localizes.  Ah,  you  do  love,  despite  all 
their  faults,  your  nation,  your  government,  your 
town  and  townspeople,  else  you  would  not  so 
often  scold  them!  Otherwise,  why  do  you  let 
us  call  them  yours?  Because  they  belong  to 
you?  No,  because  you  belong  to  them.  Be- 
yond cavil  you  are  your  own,  but  beyond  cavil, 
too,  you  are  theirs;  their  purchased  possession, 
paid  for  long,  long  in  advance  and  sight-unseen. 

You  cannot  use  a  sidewalk,  a  street-lamp,  or 
a  post-box,  or  slip  away  into  the  woods  and  find 

125 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

them  cleared  of  savages  and  deadly  serpents, 
without  seeing  part  of  the  price  paid  for  you 
before  your  great-grandfather  was  born.  So, 
then,  loving  your  town  enough  to  scold  it,  you 
will  also  serve  it ! 

Now  this  we  say  not  so  much  to  be  preaching 
as  to  bring  in  a  last  word  descriptive  of  our 
Northampton  movement.  We  do  not  make 
that  work  a  mere  aggregation  of  private  kind- 
nesses, but  a  public  business  for  the  promotion 
of  the  town  in  sanitary  upkeep,  beauty  and  civic 
fellowship. 

And  so  our  aim  is  not  chiefly  to  reward  the 
highest  art  in  gardening,  but  to  procure  its 
widest  and  most  general  dissemination.  The 
individual  is  definitely  subordinated  to  the  com- 
munity's undivided  interest.  Since  gardening 
tends  to  develop  in  fortunate  sections  and  to  die 
out  in  others,  we  have  laid  off  our  town  map  in 
seven  parts  and  made  a  rule  that  to  each  of 
these  shall  go  three  of  the  prizes. 

Moreover,  no  two  consecutive  prizes  can  be 
awarded  in  any  one  of  these  districts.  Where 
a  competitor  takes  the  capital  prize  no  other 

126 


COTTAGE  GARDENS 

can  take  a  higher  than  the  third,  and  if  two  in 
one  district  win  the  first  and  third  prizes  no 
one  else  there  can  take  a  higher  than  the  fifth. 
So  on  through  to  prize  twenty-one. 

Still  further,  a  garden  taking  any  of  these 
prizes  can  never  again  take  any  of  them  but  a 
higher  one,  and  those  who  attain  to  the  capital 
prize  are  thenceforth  hors  concours  except  to 
strive  for  the  "Past  Competitors'  Prizes,"  first 
and  second. 

Thus  the  seasons  come  and  go,  the  gardens 
wake,  rise,  rejoice  and  slumber  again;  and 
because  this  arrangement  is  so  evidently  for 
the  common  weal  and  fellowship  first,  and  yet 
leaves  personal  ownership  all  its  liberties,  rights 
and  delights,  it  is  cordially  accepted  of  the 
whole  people.  And,  lastly,  as  a  certain  dear 
lady  whom  we  may  not  more  closely  specify 
exclaimed  when,  to  her  glad  surprise,  she  easily 
turned  the  ceremonial  golden  key  which  first 
unlocked  the  Carnegie  House  of  our  People's 
Institute,  " It  works!" 


127 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN'S 
PUBLIC    VALUE 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN'S 
PUBLIC    VALUE 

WHAT  its  pages  are  to  a  book,  a  town's  pri- 
vate households  are  to  a  town. 

No  true  home,  standing  solitarily  apart  from 
the  town  (unbound,  as  it  were)  could  be  the 
blessed  thing  it  is  were  there  not  so  many  other 
houses  not  standing  apart  but  gathered  into 
villages,  towns  and  cities. 

Whence  comes  civilization  but  from  tivitas,  the 
city  ?  And  where  did  civitas  get  its  name,  when 
city  and  state  were  one,  but  from  citizen?  He 
is  not  named  for  the  city  but  the  city  for  him, 
and  his  title  meant  first  the  head  of  a  house- 
hold, the  master  of  a  home.  To  make  a  civili- 
zation, great  numbers  of  men  must  have  homes, 
must  mass  them  compactly  together  and  must 
not  mass  them  together  on  a  dead  level  of  equal 
material  equipment  but  in  a  confederation  of 
homes  of  all  ranks  and  conditions. 

131 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

The  home  is  the  cornerstone  of  the  state. 

The  town,  the  organized  assemblage  of  homes, 
is  the  keystone  of  civilization's  arch. 

In  order  to  keep  our  whole  civilization  moving 
on  and  up,  which  is  the  only  way  for  home  and 
town  to  pay  to  each  other  their  endless  spiral  of 
reciprocal  indebtedness,  every  home  in  a  town  — 
or  state,  for  that  matter  —  should  be  made  as 
truly  and  fully  a  home  as  every  wise  effort  and 
kind  influence  of  all  the  other  homes  can  make 
it.  Unless  it  takes  part  in  this  effort  and  influ- 
ence, no  home,  be  it  ever  so  favored,  can  realize, 
even  for  itself  and  in  itself,  the  finest  civiliza- 
tion it  might  attain.  Why  should  it?  I  be- 
lieve this  is  a  moral  duty,  a  debt  as  real  as 
taxes  and  very  much  like  them. 

In  our  People's  Institute  over  in  Northamp- 
ton, Massachusetts,  this  is  the  a-b-c  of  all  they 
seek  to  do:  the  individual  tutoring,  by  college 
girls  and  town  residents,  of  hundreds  of  young 
working  men  and  women  in  whatever  these  may 
choose  from  among  a  score  or  so  of  light  studies 
calculated  to  refine  their  aspirations;  the  training 
of  young  girls,  by  paid  experts,  in  the  arts  of  the 

132 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

home,  from  cooking  to  embroidery;  the  training 
of  both  sexes  in  all  the  social  amenities;  and  the 
enlistment  of  more  than  a  thousand  cottage 
homes  in  a  yearly  prize  competition. 

It  is  particularly  of  this  happy  garden  contest 
that  I  wish  to  say  a  word  or  two  more.  In  1914 
it  completed  its  sixteenth  season,  but  it  is  modelled 
on  a  much  older  one  in  the  town  of  Dunfermline, 
Scotland,  the  birthplace  of  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie, 
and  it  is  from  the  bountiful  spirit  of  that  great 
citizen  of  two  lands  that  both  affairs  draw  at 
least  one  vital  element  of  their  existence. 

We  in  Northampton  first  learned  of  the  Dun- 
fermline movement  in  1898.  We  saw  at  once 
how  strongly  such  a  scheme  might  promote  the 
general  spiritual  enrichment  of  our  working  peo- 
ple's homes  if  made  one  of  the  functions  of  our 
home-culture  clubs,  several  features  of  whose 
work  were  already  from  five  to  ten  years  old. 
We  proceeded  to  adopt  and  adapt  the  plan,  and 
had  our  first  competition  and  award  of  prizes  in 
1898-'99. 

Like  Dunfermline,  we  made  our  prizes  large, 
and  to  this  we  attribute  no  small  part  of  our 

133 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

success.  When  we  saw  fit  to  increase  their 
number  we  increased  the  total  outlay  as  well, 
and  at  present  we  award  twenty-one  prizes  a 
year,  the  highest  being  fifteen  dollars,  and  one 
hundred  dollars  the  sum  of  the  whole  twenty-one 
prizes.  So  we  have  gained  one  of  our  main  pur- 
poses: to  tempt  into  the  contest  the  man  of  the 
house  and  thus  to  stimulate  in  him  that  care  and 
pride  of  his  home,  the  decline  of  which,  in  the 
man  of  the  house,  is  one  of  the  costliest  losses  of 
hard  living. 

One  day  on  their  round  of  inspection  our 
garden  judges  came  to  a  small  house  at  the  edge 
of  the  town,  near  the  top  of  a  hill  through  which 
the  rustic  street  cuts  its  way  some  twelve  or  fif- 
teen feet  below.  The  air  was  pure,  the  sur- 
roundings green,  the  prospect  wide  and  lovely. 
Here  was  a  rare  chance  for  picturesque  garden- 
ing. Although  the  yard  was  without  a  fence 
there  had  been  some  planting  of  flowers  in  it. 
Yet  it  could  hardly  be  called  a  garden.  So  desti- 
tute was  it  of  any  intelligent  plan  and  so  un- 
cared  for  that  it  seemed  almost  to  have  a  con- 
scious, awkward  self -contempt.  In  the  flecked 

134 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

shade  of  a  rude  trellis  of  grapes  that  sheltered 
a  side  door  two  children  of  the  household  fell  to 
work  with  great  parade  at  a  small  machine,  set- 
ting bristles  into  tooth-brushes  for  a  neighboring 
factory,  but  it  was  amusingly  plain  that  their 
labor  was  spasmodic  and  capricious. 

The  mother  was  away  on  a  business  errand. 
The  father  was  present.  He  had  done  his  day's 
stint  in  the  cutlery  works  very  early,  and  with 
five  hours  of  sunlight  yet  before  him  had  no  use 
to  make  of  them  but  to  sit  on  a  bowlder  on  the 
crest  of  the  pleasant  hill  and  smoke  and  whittle. 
Had  he  been  mentally  trained  he  might,  without 
leaving  that  stone,  have  turned  those  hours  into 
real  living,  communing  with  nature  and  his 
own  mind;  but  he  had,  as  half  an  eye  could  see, 
no  developed  powers  of  observation,  reflection 
or  imagination,  and  probably,  for  sheer  want  of 
practice,  could  not  have  fixed  his  attention  on  a 
worthy  book  through  five  of  its  pages.  The 
question  that  arose  in  the  minds  of  his  visitors 
comes  again  here :  what  could  have  been  so  good 
to  keep  idleness  from  breeding  its  swarm  of  evils 
in  his  brain  and  hands  —  and  home  —  as  for 

135 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

somebody,  something,  somehow,  to  put  it  into 
his  head  —  well  —  for  example  —  to  make  a 
garden?  A  garden,  we  will  say,  that  should 
win  a  prize,  and  —  even  though  it  failed  to  win 
—  should  render  him  and  his  house  and  house- 
hold more  interesting  to  himself,  his  neighbors 
and  his  town. 

He  and  his  house  seemed  to  be  keeping  the 
Ten  Commandments  in  a  slouching  sort  of 
way  and  we  may  even  suppose  they  were  out  of 
debt  —  money  debt;  yet  already  they  were  an 
unconscious  menace  to  society;  their  wage- 
earning  powers  had  outgrown  their  wants.  Out- 
grown them  not  because  the  wages  were  too  high 
but  because  their  wants  were  too  low;  were  only 
wants  of  the  body,  wants  of  the  barrenest  uncul- 
ture;  the  inelastic  wants. 

That  is  "my  own  invention,"  that  phrase! 
The  bodily  wants  of  a  reptile  are  elastic.  If  an 
alligator  or  a  boa-constrictor  catches  a  dog  he 
can  swallow  him  whole  and  enjoy  that  one  meal 
in  unriotous  bliss  for  weeks.  Thereafter  if  he 
must  put  up  with  no  more  than  a  minnow  or  a 
mouse  he  can  do  that  for  weeks  in  unriotous 

136 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

patience.  In  a  spring  in  one  of  our  Northamp- 
ton gardens  I  saw  a  catfish  swallow  a  frog  so 
big  that  the  hind  toes  stuck  out  of  the  devourer's 
mouth  for  four  days;  but  they  went  in  at  last, 
and  the  fish,  in  his  fishy  fashion,  from  start  to 
finish  was  happy.  He  was  never  demoralized. 
It  is  not  so  with  us.  We  cannot  much  distend 
or  contract  our  purely  physical  needs.  Espe- 
cially is  any  oversupply  of  them  mischievous. 
They  have  not  the  reptilian  elasticity.  Day  by 
day  they  must  have  just  enough.  But  the  civ- 
ilized man  has  spiritual  wants  and  they  are  as 
elastic  as  air. 

A  home  is  a  house  well  filled  with  these  elastic 
wants.  Home-culture  is  getting  such  wants  into 
households  —  not  merely  into  single  individuals 
—  that  lack  them.  What  makes  a  man  rich  ? 
Is  the  term  merely  comparative?  Not  merely. 
To  be  rich  is  to  have,  beyond  the  demands  of 
our  bodily  needs,  abundant  means  to  supply 
our  spiritual  wants.  To  possess  more  material 
resources  than  we  can  or  will  use  or  bestow  to 
the  spiritual  advantage  of  ourselves  and  others 
is  to  be  perilously  rich,  whether  we  belong  to  a 

137 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

grinders'  union  in  the  cutlery  works  or  to  a 
royal  family.  Why  is  it  so  often  right  that  a 
rich  college,  for  example,  should,  in  its  money- 
chest,  feel  poor?  Because  it  could  so  easily 
supply  more  spiritual  wants  if  it  had  more 
money. 

Not  low  wages  will  ever  make  men  harmless, 
nor  high  wages  make  them  happy,  nor  low  nor 
high  save  them  from  a  spirit  of  pauperism  or  of 
malignant  envy;  but  having  wages  bigger  than 
their  bodily  wants,  and  having  spiritual  wants 
numerous  and  elastic  enough  to  use  up  the  sur- 
plus —  spiritual  wants,  that  know  both  how  to 
suffer  need  and  how  to  abound,  and  to  do  either 
without  backsliding  toward  savagery.  Whoever 
would  help  this  state  of  things  on,  let  him  seek 
at  the  same  time  to  increase  the  home's  wage- 
earning  power  and  its  spiritual  powers  to  put 
to  fine  use  the  wages  earned:  to  augment  the 
love  of  beauty  in  nature  and  in  art,  the  love  of 
truth  and  knowledge,  the  love  of  achievement 
and  of  service,  the  love  of  God  and  of  human 
society,  the  ambition  to  put  more  into  the  world 
than  we  get  out  of  it.  Wages  will  never  be  too 

138 


"Having  wages  bigger  than  their  bodily  wants,  and  having  spiritual  wants 
numerous  and  elastic  enough  to  use  up  the  surplus." 

The  owner  of  this  cottage,  who  stands  on  the  lawn,  spaded  and  graded  it  and  grassed  it 
herself,  and  by  shrubbery  plantings  about  the  house's  foundation  and  on  the  outer 
boundaries  of  the  grass  has  so  transformed  it  since  this  picture  was  taken  as  to  win  one 
of  the  highest  prizes  awarded  among  more  than  a  thousand  competitors. 


"  One  such  competing  garden  was  so  beautiful  last  year  that  strangers  driving 
by  stopped  and  asked  leave  to  dismount  and  enjoy  a  nearer  view." 

A  capital  prize-winner's  back  yard  which  was  a  sand  bank  when  he  entered  the  competition. 
His  front  yard  is  still  handsomer. 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

high,  nor  the  hours  of  a  day's  work  too  many  or 
too  few,  which  follow  that  "sliding  scale."  How 
much  our  garden  contest  may  do  of  this  sort 
for  that  cottage  on  the  hill  we  have  yet  to  know; 
last  year  was  its  first  in  the  competition.  But 
it  has  shown  the  ambition  to  enter  the  lists, 
and  a  number  that  promised  no  more  at  the 
outset  have  since  won  prizes.  One  such  was  so 
beautiful  last  year  that  strangers  driving  by 
stopped  and  asked  leave  to  dismount  and  en- 
joy a  nearer  view. 

A  certain  garden  to  which  we  early  awarded 
a  high  prize  was,  and  yet  remains,  among  the 
loveliest  in  Northampton.  Its  house  stands 
perhaps  seventy  feet  back  from  the  public  way 
and  so  nearly  at  one  edge  of  its  broad  lot  that 
all  its  exits  and  entrances  are  away  from  that 
side  and  toward  the  garden.  A  lawn  and  front 
bordered  on  side  by  loose  hedges  of  Regel's 
privet  and  Thunberg's  barberry  and  with  only 
one  or  two  slim  trees  of  delicate  foliage  near 
its  street  line,  rises  slightly  from  the  sidewalk 
to  the  house  in  a  smooth  half  wave  that  never 
sinks  below  any  level  it  has  attained  and  yet 

139 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

consists  of  two  curves.  (It  takes  two  curves, 
let  us  say  once  more,  to  make  even  half  of  the 
gentlest  wave  that  can  be  made,  if  you  take 
it  from  the  middle  of  the  crest  to  the  middle 
of  the  trough,  and  in  our  American  garden- 
ing thousands  of  lawns,  especially  small  front 
lawns,  are  spoiled  in  their  first  lay-out  by  being 
sloped  in  a  single  curve  instead  of  in  two  curves 
bending  opposite  ways.)  Along  a  side  of  this 
greensward  farthest  from  the  boundary  to 
which  the  house  is  so  closely  set  are  the  drive 
and  walk,  in  one,  and  on  the  farther  side  of  these, 
next  the  sun,  is  the  main  flower-garden,  half 
surrounding  another  and  smaller  piece  of  lawn. 
The  dwelling  stands  endwise  to  the  street  and 
broadside  to  this  expanse  of  bloom.  Against 
its  front  foundations  lies  a  bed  of  flowering 
shrubs  which  at  the  corner  farthest  from  the 
drive  swings  away  along  that  side's  boundary 
line  and  borders  it  with  shrubbery  down  to 
the  street,  the  main  feature  of  the  group  being  a 
luxuriant  flowering  quince  as  large  as  ten  ordi- 
nary ones  and  in  every  springtime  a  red  splendor. 
But  the  focus  of  the  gardening  scheme  is  at 
140 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

the  southeasterly  side  entrance  of  the  house. 
To  this  the  drive  comes  on  unrigorous  lines  from 
the  street.  The  walk  curves  away  a  few  steps 
earlier  to  go  to  the  front  door  but  the  drive, 
passing  on,  swings  in  under  the  rear  corner 
windows  and  to  the  kitchen  steps,  veers  around 
by  the  carriage-house  door  and  so  loops  back 
into  itself.  In  this  loop,  and  all  about  the 
bases  of  the  dwelling  and  carriage-house  the 
flowers  rise  in  dense  abundance,  related  to  one 
another  with  clever  taste  and  with  a  happy 
care  for  a  procession  of  bloom  uninterrupted 
throughout  the  season.  Straightaway  from  the 
side  door,  leaving  the  drive  at  a  right  angle, 
runs  a  short  arbor  of  vines.  Four  or  five  steps 
to  the  left  of  this  bower  a  clump  of  shrubbery 
veils  the  view  from  the  street  and  in  between 
shrubs  and  arbor  lies  a  small  pool  of  water 
flowers  and  goldfish.  On  the  arbor's  right,  in 
charming  privacy,  masked  by  hollyhocks,  dah- 
lias and  other  tall-maidenly  things,  lie  beds  of 
strawberries  and  lettuce  and  all  the  prim  ranks 
and  orders  of  the  kitchen  garden. 

Words  are  poor  things  to  paint  with;  I  wish 
141 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

I  could  set  forth  all  in  one  clear  picture:  lawn, 
drive,  house,  loop,  lily  pond,  bower,  rose-bordered 
drive  again  (as  the  eye  comes  back)  and  flowers 
crowding  before,  behind  and  beside  you,  some 
following  clear  out  to  the  street  and  beseeching 
you  not  to  go  so  soon.  Such  is  the  garden, 
kept  without  hired  labor,  of  two  soft-handed 
women;  not  beyond  criticism  in  any  of  its 
aspects  but  bearing  witness  to  their  love  of 
nature,  of  beauty  and  of  home  and  of  their 
wisdom  and  skill  to  exalt  and  refine  them. 

This  competitor  early  won,  I  say,  a  leading 
prize,  and  in  later  seasons  easily  held  —  still 
holds  —  a  fine  pre-eminence.  Yet  the  later 
prizes  fell  to  others,  because,  while  this  one 
had  been  a  beautiful  garden  for  years  before 
the  competition  began,  they,  rising  from  much 
newer  and  humbler  beginnings,  sometimes  from 
very  chaos,  showed  between  one  season  and  the 
next  far  greater  advances  toward  artistic  ex- 
cellence. In  the  very  next  year  a  high  prize 
fell  to  a  garden  in  full  sight  of  this  one,  a  garden 
whose  makers  had  caught  their  inspiration  from 
this  one,  and,  copying  its  art,  had  brought  forth 

142 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

a  charming  result  out  of  what  our  judges  de- 
scribed as  "particularly  forlorn  conditions." 

Does  this  seem  hardly  fair  to  the  first  garden  ? 
But  to  spread  the  gardening  contagion  and  to 
instigate  a  wise  copying  after  the  right  gar- 
deners —  these  are  what  our  prizes  and  honors 
are  for.  Progress  first,  perfection  afterward,  is 
our  maxim.  We  value  and  reward  originality, 
nevertheless,  and  only  count  it  a  stronger  neces- 
sity to  see  not  merely  that  no  talented  or  hap- 
pily circumstanced  few,  but  that  not  even  any 
one  or  two  fortunate  neighborhoods,  shall  pres- 
ently be  capturing  all  the  prizes.  Hence  the 
rules  already  cited,  which  a  prompt  discovery 
of  this  tendency  forced  upon  us. 

About  this  copying:  no  art  is  more  inoffen- 
sively imitated  than  gardening  but  unluckily 
none  is  more  easily,  or  more  absurdly,  mis- 
copied.  A  safe  way  is  to  copy  the  gardener 
rather  than  the  garden.  To  copy  any  perform- 
ance in  a  way  to  do  it  honor  we  must  discern 
and  adapt  its  art  without  mimicking  its  act. 
To  miscopy  is  far  easier  —  we  have  only  to  mimic 
the  act  and  murder  the  art.  I  once  heard  a 

143 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

man  ask  an  architect  if  it  would  not  answer  to 
give  his  plan  to  the  contractor  and  let  him  work 
it  out  without  the  architect's  supervision. 

"My  dear  sir,"  the  architect  replied,  "you 
wouldn't  know  the  corpse." 

I  suppose  one  reason  why  even  the  miscopy- 
ing  of  gardens  provokes  so  little  offence  is  that 
the  acts  it  mimics  have  no  art  it  can  murder. 
Mrs.  Budd  sets  out  her  one  little  "high  ge- 
raingia"  in  the  middle  of  her  tiny  grass-plat 
(probably  trimming  it  to  look  like  a  ballet- 
dancer  on  one  leg).  Whereupon  Mrs.  Mudd, 
the  situation  of  whose  house  and  grounds  is 
not  in  the  least  like  her  neighbor's,  plants  and 
trims  hers  the  same  way  and  feels  sure  it  has 
the  same  effect,  for  —  why  shouldn't  it  ? 

The  prize-winning  copyist  I  am  telling  of 
copied  principles  only.  To  have  copied  mere 
performance  would  have  been  particularly  un- 
lucky, for  though  his  garden  stands  within 
fifty  yards  of  the  one  from  which  it  drew  its 
inspiration  the  two  are  so  differently  located 
that  the  same  art  principles  demand  of  them 
very  different  performances.  An  old-time  lover 

144 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

of  gardens  whom  I  have  to  quote  at  second-hand 
mentions  in  contrast  "gardens  to  look  in  upon" 
and  "gardens  to  look  out  from."  The  garden 
I  have  described  at  length  is  planned  to  be 
looked  in  upon;  most  town  gardens  must  be, 
of  course;  but  its  competitor  across  the  street, 
of  which  I  am  about  to  give  account,  is  an  ex- 
ception. The  lot  has  a  very  broad  front  and 
very  little  depth  —  at  one  side  almost  none,  at 
the  other  barely  enough  for  a  small  house 
and  a  few  feet  of  front  yard.  Why  there  should 
be  a  drive  I  cannot  say,  but  it  is  so  well  taken 
into  the  general  scheme  that  to  call  it  to  account 
would  be  ungenerous.  It  enters  at  the  narrow- 
est part  of  the  ground,  farthest  from  the  house, 
makes  a  long  parabola,  and  turns  again  into 
the  street  close  beside  the  dwelling.  In  the  bit 
of  lawn  thus  marked  off,  shrubs  have  place  near 
the  street,  three  or  four  old  apple-trees  range 
down  the  middle,  and  along  the  drive  runs  a 
gay  border  of  annual  flowers.  Along  the  rear 
side  of  the  drive  lies  but  a  narrow  strip  of  turf 
beyond  which  the  ground  drops  all  at  once  to 
another  level  some  thirty  feet  below.  On  the 

145 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

right  this  fall  is  so  abrupt  that  the  only  way 
down  to  it  is  by  a  steep  rustic  stair.  On  the 
left,  behind  the  house,  the  face  of  the  bluff  is 
broken  into  narrow  terraces,  from  top  to  bot- 
tom of  which,  and  well  out  on  the  lower  level, 
the  entire  space  is  mantled  with  the  richly 
burdened  trellises  of  a  small  vineyard.  At  the 
right  on  this  lower  ground  is  a  kitchen  garden; 
beyond  it  stretch  fair  meadows  too  low  to 
build  on,  but  fruitful  in  hay  and  grain;  farther 
away,  on  higher  ground,  the  town  again  shows 
its  gables  and  steeples  among  its  great  maples 
and  elms,  and  still  beyond,  some  three  miles 
distant,  the  green  domes  and  brown  precipices 
of  the  Mount  Holyoke  Range  stand  across  the 
sky  in  sharp  billows  of  forest  and  rock.  It 
seems  at  times  a  pity  that  Mount  Holyoke  and 
Mount  Tom  cannot  themselves  know  how 
many  modest  gardens  they  are  a  component 
part  of --the  high  violin  note  of:  gardens,  like 
this  one,  "to  look  out  from." 

It  stops  one's  pen  for  one  to  find  himself 
using  the  same  phrases  for  these  New  England 
cottage  gardens  that  famous  travellers  have 

146 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

used  in  telling  of  the  gardens  of  Italian  princes; 
yet  why  should  we  not,  when  the  one  nature 
and  the  one  art  are  mother  and  godmother  of 
them  all  ?  It  is  a  laughing  wonder  what  beauty 
can  be  called  into  life  about  the  most  unpre- 
tentious domicile,  out  of  what  ugliness  such 
beauty  can  be  evoked  and  at  how  trivial  a 
cost  in  money.  Three  years  before  this  "garden 
to  look  out  from"  won  its  Carnegie  prize  it  was 
for  the  most  part  a  rubbish  heap.  Let  me 
now  tell  of  one  other,  that  sprang  from  conditions 
still  more  unlovely  because  cramped  and  shut  in. 
It  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  town  from 
those  I  have  been  telling  of.  The  house  stood 
broadside  to  the  street  and  flush  with  the  side- 
walk. The  front  of  the  lot  was  only  broad 
enough  for  the  house  and  an  alley  hardly  four 
feet  wide  between  the  house's  end  and  a  high, 
tight  board  fence.  The  alley  led  into  a  small, 
square  back  yard  one  of  whose  bounds  was  the 
back  fence  of  the  house.  On  a  second  side  was 
a  low,  mossy,  picturesquely  old  wing-building 
set  at  right  angles  to  the  larger  house,  its  doors 
and  windows  letting  into  the  yard.  A  third 

147 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

boundary  was  the  side  of  one  well  weathered 
barn  and  the  back  of  another,  with  a  scanty 
glimpse  between  them  of  meadows  stretching 
down  to  the  Connecticut  River.  The  fourth 
was  an  open  fence  marking  off  a  field  of  riotous 
weeds.  When  the  tenant  mistress  of  this  un- 
promising spot  began  to  occupy  it  the  yard  and 
alley  were  a  free  range  for  the  poultry  of  the 
neighborhood,  and  its  only  greenery  was  two 
or  three  haphazard  patches  of  weedy  turf. 
One-fourth  of  the  ground,  in  the  angle  made 
by  the  open  fence  and  one  of  the  barns,  had  been 
a  hen-yard  and  was  still  inclosed  within  a  high 
wire-netting;  but  outside  that  space  every 
plant  she  set  out  had  to  be  protected  from  the 
grubbing  fowls  by  four  stakes  driven  down  with 
a  hammer.  Three  years  afterward  she  bore  off 
our  capital  prize  in  a  competition  of  one  hun- 
dred gardens.  Let  me  tell  what  the  judges 
found. 

Out  in  the  street,  at  the  off  side  of  the  alley- 
gate,  between  a  rude  fence  and  an  electric- 
railway  siding,  in  about  as  much  space  as 
would  give  standing  room  to  one  horse  and 

148 


"Beauty  can  be  called  into  life  about  the  most  unpretentious  domicile." 

One  of  a  great  number  of  competing  cottages  whose  gardens  are  handsomer  in  the  rear  and 
out  of  sight  than  on  the  street-front,  though  well  kept  there  also. 


"Those  who  pay  no  one  to  dig,  plant  or  prune  for  them." 

The  aged  owner  of  this  place  has  hired  no  help  for  twenty  years.  Behind  her  honey-locust 
hedge  a  highly  kept  and  handsome  flower  and  shrubbery  garden  fills  the  whole  house  lot. 
She  is  a  capital  prize-winner. 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

cart,  bloomed  —  not  by  right  of  lease,  but  by 
permission  of  the  railway  company  —  a  wealth 
of  annual  flowers,  the  lowest  (pansies  and  such 
like)  at  the  outer  edge,  the  tallest  against  the 
unsightly  fence.  This  was  the  prelude.  In  the 
alley  the  fence  was  clothed  with  vines;  the  win- 
dows —  of  which  there  were  two  —  were  decked 
with  boxes  of  plumbago  —  pink,  violet,  white 
and  blue,  and  of  lady-ferns  and  maiden-hair. 
The  back  yard  was  a  soft,  smooth  turf  wher- 
ever there  were  not  flowers.  Along  the  back 
doors  and  windows  of  the  house  and  the  low- 
roofed  wing  a  rough  arbor  was  covered  with  a 
vine  whose  countless  blossoms  scented  the  air 
and  feasted  the  bees,  while  its  luminous  canopy 
sheltered  a  rare  assemblage  of  such  flowers  as 
bloom  and  thrive  only  for  those  whom  they 
know  and  trust.  But  the  crowning  transforma- 
tion was  out  in  the  open  sunlight,  in  the  space 
which  had  been  the  hen-yard.  Within  it  was  a 
holiday  throng  of  the  gardening  world's  best- 
known  and  loved  gentles  and  commons,  from 
roses  down  to  forget-me-nots.  Its  screen  of 
poultry-netting  had  been  kept  in  place,  and  no 

149 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

feature  on  the  premises  more  charmingly  showed 
that  this  floral  profusion  came  of  no  mere  greed 
for  abundance  or  diversity,  but  of  a  true  art 
instinct  recognizing  the  limits  of  its  resources. 
The  garden  had  to  be  made  a  "garden  to  look 
in  upon,"  a  veritable  imprisoned  garden;  the 
question  of  expense  required  it  to  be  chiefly  of 
annuals,  and  all  the  structural  features  of  the 
place  called  for  concealment.  These  wire  net- 
tings did  so;  on  their  outside,  next  the  grass, 
two  complete  groups  of  herbaceous  things  were 
so  disposed  as  to  keep  them  veiled  in  bloom 
throughout  the  whole  warm  half  of  the  year. 
Close  against  them  and  overpeering  their  tops 
were  hollyhocks  and  dahlias;  against  these  stood 
at  lesser  height  sweet  peas,  asters,  zinnias, 
coreopsis  and  others  of  like  stature;  in  front  of 
these  were  poppies  for  summer,  marigolds  for 
autumn;  beneath  these  again  were  verbenas, 
candytuft  —  all  this  is  sketched  from  memory, 
and  I  recall  the  winsome  effect  rather  than 
species  and  names;  and  still  below  nestled  por- 
tulaca  and  periwinkle.  I  fear  the  enumeration 
gives  but  a  harlequin  effect;  but  the  fault  of 

150 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

that  is  surely  mine,  for  the  result  was  delight- 
ful. 

I  have  ventured  to  make  report  of  these  two 
or  three  gardens,  not  as  in  themselves  worthy 
of  a  great  public's  consideration  and  praise 
but  as  happy  instances  of  a  fruitage  we  are 
gathering  among  hundreds  of  homes  in  a  little 
city  where  it  is  proposed  to  give  every  home,  if 
possible,  its  utmost  value.  Many  other  pleas- 
ing examples  could  be  cited  if  further  turnings 
of  the  kaleidoscope  were  a  real  need,  but  this 
slender  discourse  is  as  long  now  as  it  should  be. 
It  seems  droll  to  call  grave  attention  to  such 
humble  things  in  a  world  so  rightly  preoccupied 
with  great  sciences  and  high  arts,  vast  industries, 
shining  discoveries  and  international  rivalries, 
strifes  and  projects;  yet  what  are  all  these  for, 
at  last,  but  the  simple  citizen,  his  family  and  his 
home,  and  for  him  and  them  in  the  cottage  as 
well  as  in  the  palace?  The  poor  man's  home 
may  shine  dimly  but  it  is  one  of  the  stars  by 
which  civilization  must  guide  its  onward  course. 

It  may  well  be  supposed  that  those  whose 
office  it  is  to  award  the  twenty-one  prizes  of  our 

151 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

garden  competition  among  our  eleven  hundred 
competitors  have  an  intricate  task.  Yet  some 
of  its  intricacies  add  to  the  pleasure  of  it. 

One  of  these  pleasing  complications  arises 
from  our  division  of  the  field  of  contest  into 
seven  parts,  in  each  of  which  prizes  must  be 
given  to  three  contestants.  Another  comes  from 
our  rule  that  not  alone  the  competitors  who 
show  the  best  gardening  are  to  be  rewarded, 
but  also  those  who  have  made  the  most  earnest 
effort  and  largest  progress  toward  the  best  gar- 
dening. Under  this  plan  one  whose  work  shows 
a  patient  and  signal  progress  in  the  face  of 
many  disadvantages  may  outrank  on  our  prize 
list  a  rival  whose  superior  artistic  result  has 
been  got  easily  under  favoring  conditions  and 
reveals  no  marked  advance  beyond  the  season 
before. 

After  the  manner  of  Dunfermline  again,  our 
rules  are  that  no  gardener  by  trade  and  no  one 
who  hires  help  in  his  garden  may  compete.  Any 
friend  may  help  his  friend,  and  any  one  may  use 
all  the  advice  he  can  get  from  amateur  or  pro- 
fessional. Children  may  help  in  the  care  of 

152 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

the  gardens,  and  many  do;  but  children  may  not 
themselves  put  gardens  into  the  competition. 

"If  the  head  of  the  house  is  the  gardener-in- 
chief,"  shrewdly  argued  one  of  our  committee, 
"the  children,  oftener  than  otherwise,  will  gar- 
den with  him,  or  will  catch  the  gardening  spirit 
as  they  grow  up;  but  if  the  children  are  head- 
gardeners  we  shall  get  only  children's  gardening. 
We  want  to  dispel  the  notion  that  flower-garden- 
ing is  only  woman's  work  and  child's  play." 

Our  rule  against  hired  labor  sets  naturally  a 
maximum  limit  to  the  extent  of  ground  a  garden 
may  cover.  Our  minimum  is  but  fifty  square 
yards,  including  turf,  beds,  and  walks,  and  it 
may  be  of  any  shape  whatever  if  only  it  does 
not  leave  out  any  part  of  the  dooryard,  front  or 
rear,  and  give  it  up  to  neglect  and  disorder.  To 
the  ear  even  fifty  square  yards  seems  extensive, 
but  really  it  is  very  small.  It  had  so  formidable 
a  sound  when  we  first  named  it  that  one  of  our 
most  esteemed  friends,  pastor  of  a  Catholic 
church  in  that  very  pretty  and  thrifty  part  of 
Northampton  called  for  its  silk  mills  Florence, 
generously  added  two  supplementary  prizes  for 

153 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

gardens  under  the  limit  of  size.  This  happy 
thought  had  a  good  effect,  for,  although  in  the 
first  and  second  years  Father  Gallen's  people 
took  prizes  for  gardens  above  the  minimum 
limit  in  size,  while  his  own  two  prizes  fell  to 
contestants  not  in  his  flock,  yet  only  in  the 
third  year  did  it  become  to  all  of  us  quite  as 
plain  as  a  pikestaff  that  fifty  square  yards  are 
only  the  one-fiftieth  part  of  fifty  yards  square, 
and  that  whoever  in  Northampton  had  a  door- 
yard  at  all  had  fifty  square  yards.  In  1903 
more  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  gardens  were 
already  in  the  contest  but  every  one  was  large 
enough  to  compete  for  the  Carnegie  prizes,  and 
the  kind  bestower  of  the  extra  ones  (withdrawn 
as  superfluous),  unselfishly  ignoring  his  own  large 
share  of  credit,  wrote: 

"Your  gardens  have  altered  the  aspect  of  my 
parish." 

Such  praise  is  high  wages.  It  is  better  than 
to  have  achieved  the  very  perfection  of  garden- 
ing about  any  one  home.  We  are  not  trying  to 
raise  the  world's  standard  of  the  gardening  art. 
Our  work  is  for  the  home  and  its  indwellers; 

154 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

for  the  home  and  the  town.  Our  ideal  is  a  town 
of  homes  all  taking  pleasant  care  of  one  an- 
other. We  want  to  make  all  neighbors  and  all 
homes  esthetically  interesting  to  one  another, 
believing  that  this  will  relate  them  humanely, 
morally  and  politically.  We  began  with  those 
who  pay  no  one  to  dig,  plant  or  prune  for  them, 
but  soon  we  went  further  and  ventured  to 
open  to  gardens  kept  with  hired  service  an  allied 
competition  for  a  separate  list  of  prizes.  In  this 
way  we  put  into  motion,  between  two  elements 
of  our  people  which  there  are  always  more  than 
enough  influences  to  hold  sufficiently  apart,  a 
joint  pursuit  of  the  same  refining  delight  and 
so  promoted  the  fellowship  of  an  unconflicting 
common  interest.  In  degree  some  of  us  who 
use  hired  help  had  already  obtained  this  effect. 
Last  season: 

"Come,"  I  often  heard  one  of  our  judges  say 
on  his  rounds,  "see  my  own  garden  some  after- 
noon; I'll  show  you  all  the  mistakes  I've  made  !" 
And  some  came,  and  exchanged  seeds  and  plants 
with  him. 

"A  high  civilization,"  said  an  old  soldier  to  me 
155 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

only  a  few  days  ago,  "must  always  produce  great 
social  inequalities.  They  are  needed  mainly  by 
and  for  those  who  see  no  need  of  them." 

I  admitted  that  the  need  is  as  real,  though  not 
so  stern,  as  the  need  of  inequalities  in  military 
rank. 

"But,"  I  said,  "in  the  military  relation  you 
must  also  vividly  keep  up,  across  all  inequalities 
of  rank,  a  splendid  sentiment  of  common  inter- 
est and  devotion,  mutual  confidence  and  affec- 
tion, or  your  army  will  be  but  a  broken  weapon, 
a  sword  without  a  hilt." 

"Yes,"  he  agreed,  "and  so  in  civilization;  if 
it  would  be  of  the  highest  it  must  draw  across 
its  lines  of  social  cleavage  the  bonds  of  civic  fel- 
lowship." 

It  was  what  I  had  intended  to  say  myself. 
Social  selection  raises  walls  between  us  which 
we  all  help  to  build,  but  they  need  not  be 
Chinese  walls.  They  need  not  be  so  high  that 
civic  fellowship,  even  at  its  most  feminine 
stature,  may  not  look  over  them  every  now  and 
then  to  ask: 

"How  does  my  neighbor's  garden  grow?" 

156 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

It  is  with  this  end  in  view  as  well  as  for 
practical  convenience  that  we  have  divided  our 
field  into  seven  districts  and  from  our  "women's 
council"  have  appointed  residents  of  each  to 
visit,  animate  and  counsel  the  contestants  of 
that  district.  The  plan  works  well. 

On  the  other  hand,  to  prevent  the  move- 
ment, in  any  district,  from  shrinking  into  vil- 
lage isolation;  in  order  to  keep  the  whole  town 
comprised,  and,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  to  win  the 
whole  town's  sympathy  and  participation,  we 
have  made  a  rule  that  in  whatever  district  the 
capital  prize  is  awarded,  the  second  prize  must 
go  to  some  other  district.  If  we  have  said  this 
before  you  may  slip  it  here;  a  certain  repeti- 
tiousness  is  one  part  of  our  policy.  A  competi- 
tor in  the  district  where  the  capital  prize  is 
awarded  may  take  the  third  prize,  but  no  one 
may  take  the  third  in  the  district  where  the 
second  has  been  awarded.  He  may,  however, 
be  given  the  fourth.  In  a  word,  no  two  con- 
secutive prizes  can  be  won  in  the  same  district. 
Also,  not  more  than  three  prizes  of  the  fifteen 
may  in  one  season  be  awarded  in  any  one  district. 

157 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

So  each  district  has  three  prize-winners  each 
year,  and  each  year  the  prizes  go  all  over  town. 
Again,  no  garden  may  take  the  same  prize  two 
years  in  succession;  it  must  take  a  higher  one 
or  else  wait  over. 

"This  prize-garden  business  is  just  all  right !" 
said  one  of  the  competitors  to  our  general  secre- 
tary. "It  gives  us  good  things  to  say  to  one 
another's  face  instead  o'  bad  things  at  one  an- 
other's back,  it  does  ! " 

That  is  a  merit  we  claim  for  it;  that  it  oper- 
ates, in  the  most  inexpensive  way  that  can  be,  to 
restore  the  social  bond.  Hard  poverty  minus 
village  neighborship  drives  the  social  relation 
out  of  the  home  and  starves  out  of  its  victims 
their  spiritual  powers  to  interest  and  entertain 
one  another,  or  even  themselves.  If  something 
could  keep  alive  the  good  aspects  of  village 
neighborship  without  disturbing  what  is  good  in 
that  more  energetic  social  assortment  which 
follows  the  expansion  of  the  village  into  the 
town  or  city,  we  should  have  better  and  fairer 
towns  and  cities  and  a  sounder  and  safer  civili- 
zation. But  it  must  be  something  which  will 

158 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

give  entirely  differing  social  elements  "good 
things  to  say  to  one  another's  face  instead  of  bad 
things  at  one  another's  back." 

We  believe  our  Northampton  garden  com- 
petition tends  to  do  this.  It  brings  together 
in  neighborly  fellowship  those  whom  the  dis- 
crepancies of  social  accomplishments  would  for- 
ever hold  asunder  and  it  brings  them  together 
without  forced  equality  or  awkward  condescen- 
sion, civic  partners  in  that  common  weal  to 
neglect  which  is  one  of  the  "dangers  and  temp- 
tations of  the  home." 

Two  of  our  committee  called  one  day  at  a 
house  whose  garden  seemed  to  have  fallen  into 
its  ill  condition  after  a  very  happy  start.  Its 
mistress  came  to  the  door  wearing  a  heart-weary 
look.  The  weather  had  been  very  dry,  she 
said  in  a  melodious  French  accent,  and  she 
had  not  felt  so  very  well,  and  so  she  had  not 
cared  to  struggle  for  a  garden,  much  less  for  a 
prize. 

"But  the  weather,"  suggested  her  visitors, 
"had  been  quite  as  dry  for  her  competitors,  and 
few  of  them  had  made  so  fair  a  beginning.  To 

159 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

say  nothing  of  prizes,  was  not  the  garden  itself 
its  own  reward?" 

She  shook  her  head  drearily;  she  did  not 
know  that  she  should  ever  care  to  garden  any 
more. 

"Why?"  exclaimed  one  questioner  persua- 
sively, "y°u  didn't  talk  so  when  I  was  here  last 
month!" 

"No,"  was  the  reply,  "but  since  three  week' 
ag-o  —  "  and  all  at  once  up  came  the  stifled 
tears,  filling  her  great  black  eyes  and  coursing 
down  her  cheeks  unhindered,  "I  los'  my  baby." 

The  abashed  visitors  stammered  such  apolo- 
gies as  they  could.  "They  would  not  have  come 
on  this  untimely  errand  could  they  have  known." 
They  begged  forgiveness  for  their  slowness  to 
perceive. 

"Yet  do  not  wholly,"  they  presently  ven- 
tured to  urge,  "give  up  your  garden.  The  day 
may  come  when  the  thought  that  is  now  so 
bitter  will,  as  a  memory,  yield  some  sweetness 
as  well,  and  then  it  may  be  that  the  least  of 
bitterness  and  the  most  of  sweetness  will  come 
to  you  when  you  are  busy  among  your  flowers." 

160 


THE    PRIVATE    GARDEN 

"It  may  be,"  she  sighed,  but  with  an  uncon- 
vinced shrug.  And  still,  before  the  summer  was 
gone,  the  garden  sedately,  yet  very  sweetly, 
smiled  again  and  even  the  visitors  ventured 
back. 

That  was  nearly  three  years  ago.  Only  a 
few  weeks  since  those  two  were  in  the  company 
of  an  accomplished  man  who  by  some  chance  — 
being  a  Frenchman  —  had  met  and  talked  with 
this  mother  and  her  husband. 

"We  made  a  sad  bungle  there,"  said  the 
visitors. 

"Do  not  think  it !"  he  protested.  "They  are 
your  devoted  friends.  They  speak  of  you  with 
the  tenderest  regard.  Moreover,  I  think  they 
told  me  that  last  year  —  ' 

"Yes,"  rejoined  one  of  the  visitors,  "last  year 
their  garden  took  one  of  the  prizes." 


161 


THE  MIDWINTER  GARDENS 
OF  NEW  ORLEANS 


THE  MIDWINTER  GARDENS 
OF  NEW  ORLEANS 

IF  the  following  pages  might  choose  their 
own  time  and  place  they  would  meet  their 
reader  not  in  the  trolley-car  or  on  the  suburban 
train,  but  in  his  own  home,  comfortably  seated. 
For  in  order  to  justify  the  eulogistic  tone  of  the 
descriptions  which  must  presently  occupy  them 
their  first  word  must  be  a  conciliatory  protest 
against  hurry.  One  reason  we  Americans  gar- 
den so  little  is  that  we  are  so  perpetually  in 
haste.  The  art  of  gardening  is  primarily  a 
leisurely  and  gentle  one. 

And  gentility  still  has  some  rights.  Our 
Louisiana  Creoles  know  this,  and  at  times 
maintain  it  far  beyond  the  pales  of  their  ever- 
green gardens. 

"Step  lively'?"  one  of  them  is  said  to  have 
amazedly  retorted  in  a  New  York  street-car. 
"No,  the  lady  shall  not  step  lively.  At  yo' 

165 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

leisure,  madame,  entrez ! "  In  New  Orleans 
the  conductors  do  not  cry  "Step  lively!"  Right 
or  wrong,  the  cars  there  are  not  absolutely 
democratic.  Gentility  really  enjoys  in  them  a 
certain  right  to  be  treated  gently. 

If  democracy  could  know  its  own  tyrants  it 
would  know  that  one  of  them  is  haste  —  the 
haste,  the  hurry  of  the  crowd;  that  hurry  whose 
cracking  whip  makes  every  one  a  compulsory 
sharer  in  it.  The  street-car  conductor,  poor  lad, 
is  not  to  blame.  The  fault  is  ours,  many  of 
us  being  in  such  a  scramble  to  buy  democracy 
at  any  price  that,  as  if  we  were  belatedly  buying 
railway  tickets,  we  forget  to  wait  for  our  change. 

Now  one  of  this  tyrant's  human  forms  is  a 
man  a  part  of  whose  tyranny  is  to  call  himself 
a  gardener,  though  he  knows  he  is  not  one,  and 
the  symbol  of  whose  oppression  is  nothing  more 
or  less  than  that  germ  enemy  of  good  garden- 
ing, the  lawn-mower.  You,  if  you  know  the 
gardening  of  our  average  American  home  al- 
most anywhere  else,  would  see,  yourself,  how 
true  this  is,  were  you  in  New  Orleans.  But  you 
see  it  beautifully  proved  not  by  the  presence 

166 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

but  by  the  absence  of  the  tyranny.  The  lawn- 
mower  is  there,  of  course;  no  one  is  going  to 
propose  that  the  lawn-mower  anywhere  be 
abolished.  It  is  one  of  our  modern  marvels 
of  convenience,  a  blessed  release  of  countless 
human  backs  from  countless  hours  of  crouching, 
sickle-shaped,  over  the  sickle.  It  is  not  the 
tyrant,  but  only  like  so  many  other  instruments 
of  beneficent  democratic  emancipation,  the  ty- 
rant's opportunity.  A  large  part  of  its  conven- 
ience is  expedition,  and  expedition  is  the  eas- 
iest thing  in  the  world  to  become  vulgarized: 
vulgarized  it  becomes  haste,  and  haste  is  the 
tyrant.  Such  arguing  would  sound  absurdly 
subtle  aimed  against  the  uncloaked,  barefaced 
tyranny  of  the  street-car  conductor,  but  the 
tyranny  of  the  man  with  the  lawn-mower  is 
itself  subtle,  masked,  and  requires  subtlety  to 
unmask  it. 

See  how  it  operates.  For  so  we  shall  be  the 
better  prepared  for  a  generous  appreciation  of 
those  far  Southern  gardens  whose  beauty  has 
singled  them  out  for  our  admiration.  We  know, 
of  course,  that  the  "formal  garden,"  by  reason 

167 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

of  its  initial  and  continuing  costliness,  is,  and 
must  remain,  the  garden  of  the  wealthy  few, 
and  that  the  gardening  for  the  great  democracy 
of  our  land,  the  kind  that  will  make  the  country 
at  large  a  gardened  land,  is  "informal,"  free- 
hand, ungeometrical  gardening.  In  this  sort, 
on  whatever  scale,  whether  of  the  capitalist  or 
of  the  cottager,  the  supreme  feature  is  the  lawn; 
the  lawn-mower  puts  this  feature  within  the 
reach  of  all,  and  pretty  nearly  every  American 
householder  has,  such  as  it  is,  his  bit  of  Eden. 

But  just  in  that  happy  moment  the  Tempter 
gets  in.  The  garden's  mistress  or  master  is 
beguiled  to  believe  that  one  may  have  a  garden 
without  the  expense  of  a  gardener  and  at  the 
same  time  without  any  gardening  knowledge. 
The  stable-boy,  or  the  man-of-all-work,  or  the 
cook,  or  the  cottager  himself,  pushes  the  lawn- 
mower,  and  except  for  green  grass,  or  change- 
able brown  and  green,  their  bit  of  Eden  is  naked 
and  is  not  ashamed. 

Or  if  ashamed,  certain  other  beguilements, 
other  masked  democratic  tyrannies,  entering, 
reassure  it:  bliss  of  publicity,  contempt  of  skill, 

168 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

and  joy  in  machinery  and  machine  results. 
An  itinerant  ignoramus  comes  round  with  his 
own  lawn-mower,  the  pushing  of  which  he  now 
makes  his  sole  occupation  for  the  green  half  of 
the  year,  and  the  entire  length,  breadth  and 
thickness  of  whose  wisdom  is  a  wisdom  not  of 
the  lawn  but  only  of  the  lawn-mower:  how  to 
keep  its  bearings  oiled  and  its  knives  chewing 
fine;  and  the  lawn  becomes  staringly  a  factory 
product. 

Then  tyranny  turns  the  screw  again,  and  in 
the  bliss  of  publicity  and  a  very  reasonable  de- 
sire to  make  the  small  home  lot  look  as  large 
as  possible,  down  come  the  fences,  side  and 
front,  and  the  applauding  specialist  of  the  lawn- 
mower  begs  that  those  obstructions  may  never 
be  set  up  again,  because  now  the  householder 
can  have  his  lawn  mowed  so  much  quicker, 
and  he,  the  pusher,  can  serve  more  customers. 
Were  he  truly  a  gardener  he  might  know  some- 
what of  the  sweet,  sunlit,  zephyrous,  fragrant 
out-door  privacies  possible  to  a  real  garden,  and 
more  or  less  of  that  benign  art  which,  by  skil- 
ful shrubbery  plantings,  can  make  a  small 

169 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

place  look  much  larger  —  as  well  as  incompa- 
rably more  interesting  —  than  can  any  mere 
abolition  of  fences,  and  particularly  of  the  street 
fence.  But  he  has  not  so  much  as  one  eye  of 
a  genuine  gardener  or  he  would  know  that  he 
is  not  keeping  your  lawn  but  only  keeping  it 
shaven.  He  is  not  even  a  good  garden  laborer. 
You  might  as  well  ask  him  how  to  know  the 
wild  flowers  as  how  to  know  the  lawn  pests  - 
dandelion,  chickweed,  summer-grass,  heal-all, 
moneywort  and  the  like  —  with  which  you  must 
reckon  wearily  by  and  by  because  he  only 
mows  them  in  his  blindness  and  lets  them 
flatten  to  the  ground  and  scatter  their  seed 
like  an  infantry  firing-line.  Inquire  of  him 
concerning  any  one  of  the  few  orphan  shrubs 
he  has  permitted  you  to  set  where  he  least 
dislikes  them,  and  which  he  has  trimmed  clear 
of  the  sod  —  put  into  short  skirts  —  so  that  he 
may  run  his  whirling  razors  under  (and  now 
and  then  against)  them  at  full  speed.  Will  he 
know  the  smallest  fact  about  it  or  yield  any 
echo  of  your  interest  in  it? 

There  is  a  late  story  of  an  aged  mother,  in  a 
170 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

darkened  room,  saying  falteringly  to  the  kind 
son  who  has  brought  in  some  flowers  which  she 
caresses  with  her  soft  touch,  "I  was  wishing 
to-day  —  We  used  to  have  them  in  the  yard 
-  before  the  lawn-mower  —  "  and  saying  no 
more.  I  know  it  for  a  fact,  that  in  a  certain 
cemetery  the  "Sons  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion" have  for  years  been  prevented  from 
setting  up  their  modest  marks  of  commemora- 
tion upon  the  graves  of  Revolutionary  heroes, 
because  they  would  be  in  the  way  of  the  sexton's 
lawn-mower. 

Now  in  New  Orleans  the  case  is  so  different 
that  really  the  amateur  gardener  elsewhere  has 
not  all  his  rights  until  he  knows  why  it  is  so 
different.  Let  us,  therefore,  look  into  it.  In 
that  city  one  day  the  present  writer  accosted 
an  Irishman  who  stood,  pruning-shears  in  hand, 
at  the  foot  of  Clay's  statue,  Lafayette  Square. 
It  was  the  first  week  of  January,  but  beside 
him  bloomed  abundantly  that  lovely  drooping 
jasmine  called  in  the  books  jasminum  multi- 
florum. 

"Can  you  tell  me  what  shrub  this  is?" 
171 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

"That,  sor,  is  the  monthly  flora!  Thim  as 
don't  know  the  but-hanical  nayum  sometimes 
calls  it  the  stare  jismin,  but  the  but-hanical 
nayum  is  the  monthly  flora" 

The  inquirer  spoke  his  thanks  and  passed  on, 
but  an  eager  footfall  overtook  him,  his  elbow 
felt  a  touch,  and  the  high  title  came  a  third 
time:  "The  but-hanical  nayum  is  the  monthly 
floral 

The  querist  passed  on,  warmed  by  a  grateful 
esteem  for  one  who,  though  doubtless  a  skilled 
and  frequent  tinkler  of  the  lawn-mower  within 
its  just  limitations,  was  no  mere  dragoon  of  it, 
but  kept  a  regard  for  things  higher  than  the 
bare  sod,  things  of  grace  in  form,  in  bloom,  in 
odor,  and  worthy  of  "but-hanical  nayum."  No 
mere  chauffeur  he,  of  the  little  two-wheeled 
machine  whose  cult,  throughout  the  most  of 
our  land,  has  all  but  exterminated  ornamental 
gardening. 

In  New  Orleans,  where  it  has  not  conquered, 
there  is  no  crowding  for  room.  A  ten-story 
building  is  called  there  a  sky-scraper.  The 
town  has  not  a  dozen  in  all,  and  not  one  of  that 

172 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

stature  is  an  apartment  or  tenement  house. 
Having  felled  her  surrounding  forests  of  cypress 
and  drained  the  swamps  in  which  they  stood, 
she  has  at  command  an  open  plain  capable  of 
housing  a  population  seven  times  her  present 
three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  if  ever  she 
chooses  to  build  skyward  as  other  cities  do. 

But  this  explains  only  why  New  Orleans 
might  have  gardens,  not  why  she  chooses  to 
have  them,  and  has  them  by  thousands,  when 
hundreds  of  other  towns  that  have  the  room  — 
and  the  lawns  —  choose  not  to  have  the  shrub- 
beries, vines  and  flowers,  or  have  them  with- 
out arrangement.  Why  should  New  Orleans  so 
exceptionally  choose  to  garden,  and  garden 
with  such  exceptional  grace?  Her  house-lots 
are  extraordinarily  numerous  in  proportion  to 
the  numbers  of  her  people,  and  that  is  a  begin- 
ning of  the  explanation;  but  it  is  only  a  be- 
ginning. Individually  the  most  of  those  lots 
are  no  roomier  than  lots  elsewhere.  Thousands 
of  them,  prettily  planted,  are  extremely  small. 

The  explanation  lies  mainly  in  certain  pe- 
culiar limitations,  already  hinted,  of  her  — • 

173 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

democracy  !  That  is  to  say,  it  lies  in  her  fences. 
Her  fences  remain,  her  democracy  is  different 
from  the  Northern  variety.  The  difference  may 
consist  only  in  faults  both  there  and  here  which 
we  all  hope  to  see  democracy  itself  one  day 
eliminate;  but  the  difference  is  palpable.  The 
fences  mean  that  the  dwellers  behind  them 
have  never  accorded  to  each  other,  as  neighbors, 
that  liberty-to-take-liberties  of  which  Northern 
householders  and  garden-holders,  after  a  quar- 
ter-century's disappointing  experiment,  are  a  bit 
weary. 

In  New  Orleans  virtually  every  home,  be  it 
ever  so  proud  or  poor,  has  a  fence  on  each  of 
its  four  sides.  As  a  result  the  home  is  bounded 
by  its  fences,  not  by  its  doors.  Unpleasant  ne- 
cessities these  barriers  are  admitted  to  be,  and 
those  who  have  them  are  quite  right  in  not 
liking  them  in  their  bare  anatomy.  So  they 
clothe  them  with  shrubberies  and  vines  and 
thus  on  the  home's  true  corporate  bound  the 
garden's  profile,  countenance  and  character  are 
established  in  the  best  way  possible;  without, 
that  is,  any  impulse  toward  embellishment  in- 

174 


"In  New  Orleans  the  home  is  bounded  by  its  fences,  not  by  its  doors 
— so  they  clothe  them  with  shrubberies  and  vines." 

It  is  pleasant  to  notice  how  entirely  the  evergreen-vine-covered  wall  preserves  the  general 
air  of  spaciousness.  The  forest  tree  at  the  front  and  right  (evergreen  magnolia)  is  covered 
with  an  evergreen  vine  from  the  turf  to  its  branches. 


"The  lawn  .  .  .  lies  clean-breasted,  green-breasted,  from  one  shrub-and- 
flower-planted  side  to  the  other,  along  and  across." 

A  common  garden  feature  in  New  Orleans  is  the  division  fence  with  front  half  of  wire,  rear 
half  of  boards,  both  planted  out  with  shrubs.  The  overhanging  forest  tree  is  the  ever- 
green magnolia  (M .  grandiflora) . 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

sulated  from  utility.  Compelled  by  the  common 
frailties  of  all  human  nature  (even  in  a  democ- 
racy) to  maintain  fortifications,  the  householder 
has  veiled  the  militant  aspect  of  his  defences 
in  the  flowered  robes  and  garlandries  of  nature's 
diplomacy  and  hospitality.  Thus  reassured,  his 
own  inner  hospitality  can  freely  overflow  into 
the  fragrant  open  air  and  out  upon  the  lawn  — 
a  lawn  whose  dimensions  are  enlarged  to  both 
eye  and  mind,  inasmuch  as  every  step  around 
its  edges  —  around  its  meandering  shrubbery 
borders  —  is  made  affable  and  entertaining  by 
Flora's  versatilities. 

At  the  same  time,  let  us  note  in  passing, 
this  enlargement  is  partly  because  the  lawn 
—  not  always  but  very  much  oftener  than 
where  lawns  go  unenclosed  —  lies  clean-breast- 
ed, green-breasted,  from  one  shrub-and-flower- 
planted  side  to  the  other,  along  and  across; 
free  of  bush,  statue,  urn,  fountain,  sun-dial  or 
pattern-bed,  an  uninterrupted  sward.  Even 
where  there  are  lapses  from  this  delightful  ex- 
cellence they  often  do  not  spoil,  but  only  dis- 
count, more  or  less,  the  beauty  of  the  general 

175 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

scheme,  as  may  be  noted  —  if  without  offence 
we  may  offer  it  the  homage  of  criticism  —  in 
one  of  the  gardens  we  have  photographed 
[page  176]  to  illustrate  these  argumentations. 
There  eight  distinct  encumbrances  narrow  the 
sward  without  in  the  least  adding  to  the  gar- 
den's abounding  charm.  The  smallest  effort  of 
the  reader's  eye  will  show  how  largely,  in  a 
short  half-day's  work,  the  fair  scene  might  be 
enhanced  in  lovely  dignity  simply  by  the  elim- 
ination of  these  slight  excesses,  or  by  their 
withdrawal  toward  the  lawn's  margins  and  into 
closer  company  with  the  tall  trees. 

In  New  Orleans,  where,  even  when  there 
are  basements,  of  which  there  are  many,  the 
domains  of  the  cook  and  butler  are  somewhere 
else,  a  nearly  universal  feature  of  every  sort  of 
dwelling  —  the  banker's  on  two  or  three  lots, 
the  laborer's  on  half  a  one  —  is  a  paved  walk 
along  one  side  of  the  house,  between  the  house 
and  the  lawn,  from  a  front  gate  to  the  kitchen. 
Generally  there  is  but  the  one  front  gate,  facing 
the  front  door,  with  a  short  walk  leading  directly 
up  to  this  door.  In  such  case  the  rear  walk,  be- 

176 


'•5        .3 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

ginning  at  the  front  door-steps,  turns  squarely 
along  the  house's  front,  then  at  its  corner 
turns  again  as  squarely  to  the  rear  as  a  drill- 
sergeant  and  follows  the  dwelling's  ground  con- 
tour with  business  precision  —  being  a  business 
path.  In  fact  it  is  only  the  same  path  we  see 
in  uncrowded  town  life  everywhere  in  our 
land. 

But  down  there  it  shows  this  peculiarity, 
that  it  is  altogether  likely  to  be  well  bordered 
with  blooming  shrubs  and  plants  along  all  that 
side  of  it  next  the  lawn.  Of  course  it  is  a  fault 
that  this  shrubbery  border  —  and  all  the  more 
so  because  it  is  very  apt  to  be,  as  in  three  of  our 
illustrations  [pages  174, 178,  180],  a  rose  border 
—  should,  so  often  as  it  is,  be  pinched  in  be- 
tween parallel  edges.  "No  pinching"  is  as  good 
a  rule  for  the  garden  as  for  the  kindergarten. 
Manifestly,  on  the  side  next  the  house  the  edge 
between  the  walk  and  the  planted  border  should 
run  parallel  with  the  base  line  of  the  house,  for 
these  are  business  lines  and  therefore  ever  so 
properly  lines  of  promptitude  —  of  the  shortest 
practicable  distance  between  two  points  —  lines 

177 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

of  supply  and  demand,  lines  of  need.  For  lines 
of  need,  business  speed  ! 

But  for  lines  of  pleasure,  grace  and  leisure. 
It  is  the  tactful  office  of  this  shrubbery  border 
to  veil  the  business  path  from  the  lawn  —  from 
the  pleasure-ground.  Therefore  its  outside, 
lawn-side  edge  should  be  a  line  of  pleasure, 
hence  a  line  of  grace,  hence  not  a  straight  line 
(dead  line),  nor  yet  a  line  of  but  one  lethargic 
curve,  but  a  line  of  suavity  and  tranquil  on- 
going, a  leisurely  undulating  line. 

Not  to  have  it  so  is  an  error,  but  the  error 
is  an  inoffensive  one  easily  corrected  and  the 
merit  is  that  the  dwelling's  business  path  is 
greenly,  bloomingly  screened  from  its  pleasure- 
ground  by  a  lovely  natural  drapery  which  at 
the  same  time  furnishes,  as  far  as  the  path 
goes,  the  house's  robes  of  modesty.  Indeed 
they  are  furnished  farther  than  the  path  goes; 
for  no  good  work  gathers  momentum  more 
readily  than  does  good  gardening,  and  the 
householder,  having  begun  so  rightly,  has  now 
nothing  to  do  to  complete  the  main  fabric  of 
his  garden  but  to  carry  this  flow  of  natural 

178 


'The  rear  walk  .  .  .  follows  the  dwelling's  ground  contour  with  business 
precision — being  a  business  path." 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

draperies  on  round  the  domicile's  back  and 
farther  side  and  forward  to  its  front  again. 
Thus  may  he  wonderfully  extenuate,  even  above 
its  reach  and  where  it  does  not  conceal,  the 
house's  architectural  faults,  thus  winsomely  en- 
hance all  its  architectural  charm;  like  a  sweet 
human  mistress  of  the  place,  putting  into 
generous  shadow  all  the  ill,  and  into  open  sun- 
shine all  the  best,  of  a  husband's  strong  char- 
acter. (See  both  right  and  left  foreground  of 
illustration  on  page  178,  and  right  foreground  on 
page  180.) 

And  now  if  this  New  Orleans  idea  —  that 
enough  private  enclosure  to  secure  good  home 
gardening  is  not  incompatible  with  public  free- 
dom, green  lawns,  good  neighborship,  sense  of 
room  and  fulness  of  hospitality,  and  that  a 
house-lot  which  is  a  picture  is  worth  more  to 
everybody  (and  therefore  is  even  more  demo- 
cratic) than  one  which  is  little  else  than  a  map 
-  if  this  idea,  we  say,  finds  any  credence  among 
sister  cities  and  towns  that  may  be  able  to 
teach  the  Creole  city  much  in  other  realms  of 
art  and  criticism,  let  us  cast  away  chalk  and 

179 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

charcoal  for  palette  and  brush  and  show  in 
floral,  arborescent,  redolent  detail  what  is  the 
actual  pictorial  excellence  of  these  New  Orleans 
gardens. 

For  notwithstanding  all  their  shut-in  state, 
neither  their  virtues  nor  their  faults  are  hid 
from  the  passing  eye.  The  street  fence,  oftenest 
of  iron,  is  rarely  more  than  breast-high  and  is 
always  an  open  fence.  Against  its  inner  side 
frequently  runs  an  evergreen  hedge  never  taller 
than  the  fence's  top.  Commonly  it  is  not  so 
tall,  is  always  well  clipped  and  is  so  civil  to 
strangers  that  one  would  wish  to  see  its  like  on 
every  street  front,  though  he  might  prefer  to 
find  it  not  so  invariably  of  the  one  sort  of  growth 
-a  small,  handsome  privet,  that  is,  which 
nevertheless  fulfils  its  office  with  the  perfection 
of  a  solid  line  of  palace  sentries.  Unluckily 
there  still  prevails  a  very  old-fashioned  tendency 
to  treat  the  front  fence  as  in  itself  ornamental 
and  to  forget  two  things:  First,  that  its  naked- 
ness is  no  part  of  its  ornamental  value;  that  it 
would  be  much  handsomer  lightly  clothed  — 
underclothed  —  like,  probably,  its  very  next 

180 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

neighbor;  clothed  with  a  hedge,  either  close  or 
loose,  and  generously  kept  below  the  passer's 
line  of  sight.  And,  second,  that  from  the  house- 
holder's point  of  view,  looking  streetward  from 
his  garden's  inner  depth,  its  fence,  when  un- 
planted,  is  a  blank  interruption  to  his  whole 
fair  scheme  of  meandering  foliage  and  bloom 
which  on  the  other  three  sides  frames  in  the 
lawn;  as  though  the  garden  were  a  lovely  stage 
scene  with  the  fence  for  footlights,  and  some 
one  had  left  the  footlights  unlit. 

A  lovely  stage  scene,  we  say,  without  a  hint 
of  the  stage's  unreality;  for  the  side  and  rear 
fences  and  walls,  being  frankly  unornamental, 
call  for  more  careful  management  than  the 
front  and  are  often  charmingly  treated.  (Page 
174.)  (See,  for  an  example  of  a  side  fence  with 
front  half  of  wire  and  rear  half  of  boards,  page 
174,  and  for  solid  walls,  pages  180  and  184.) 
Where  they  separate  neighbors'  front  lawns  they 
may  be  low  and  open,  but  back  of  the  building- 
line,  being  of  tenest  tight  and  generally  more  than 
head-high,  they  are  sure  to  be  draped  with  such 
climbing  floral  fineries  as  honeysuckles,  ivies, 

181 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

jasmines  white  and  yellow,  lantanas,  roses  or 
the  Madeira  vine.  More  frequently  than  not 
they  are  planted  also,  in  strong  masses,  with 
ever  so  many  beautiful  sorts  of  firmer-stemmed 
growths,  herbaceous  next  the  sod,  woody  be- 
hind, assembled  according  to  stature,  from  one 
to  twelve  feet  high,  swinging  in  and  out  around 
the  lawn  until  all  stiffness  of  boundaries  is 
waved  and  smiled  away. 

In  that  first  week  of  January  already  men- 
tioned the  present  writer  saw  at  every  turn,  in 
such  borders  and  in  leaf  and  blossom,  the  deli- 
cate blue-flowered  plumbago;  two  or  three 
kinds  of  white  jasmine,  also  in  bloom;  and  the 
broad  bush-form  of  the  yellow  jasmine,  begin- 
ning to  flower.  With  them  were  blooming 
roses  of  a  dozen  kinds;  the  hibiscus  (not  althaea 
but  the  H .  rosasinensis  of  our  Northern  green- 
houses), slim  and  tall,  flaring  its  mallow- 
flowers  pink,  orange,  salmon  and  deep  red; 
the  trailing-lantana,  covering  broad  trellises  of 
ten  feet  in  height  and  with  its  drooping  masses 
of  delicate  foliage  turned  from  green  to  mingled 
hues  of  lilac  and  rose  by  a  complete  mantle  of 

182 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

their  blossoms.  He  saw  the  low,  sweet-scented 
geraniums  of  lemon,  rose  and  nutmeg  odors, 
persisting  through  the  winter  unblighted,  and 
the  round-leaved,  "zonal"  sorts  surprisingly 
large  of  growth  —  in  one  case,  on  a  division 
fence,  trained  to  the  width  and  height  of  six 
feet.  There,  too,  was  the  poinsettia  still  bend- 
ing in  its  Christmas  red,  taller  than  the  tallest 
man's  reach,  often  set  too  forthpushingly  at  the 
front,  but  at  times,  with  truer  art,  glowing  like 
a  red  constellation  from  the  remoter  bays  of 
the  lawn;  and  there,  taller  yet,  the  evergreen 
Magnolia  fuscata,  full  of  its  waxen,  cream- 
tinted,  inch-long  flowers  smelling  delicately  like 
the  banana.  He  found  the  sweet  olive,  of  re- 
fined leaf  and  minute  axillary  flowers  yielding 
their  ravishing  tonic  odor  with  the  reserve  of 
the  violet;  the  pittosporum;  the  box;  the  myrtle; 
the  camphor-tree  with  its  neat  foliage  answer- 
ing fragrantly  the  grasp  of  the  hand.  The  dark 
camellia  was  there,  as  broad  and  tall  as  a  lilac- 
bush,  its  firm,  glossy  leaves  of  the  deepest  green 
and  its  splendid  red  flowers  covering  it  from 
tip  to  sod,  one  specimen  showing  by  count  a 

183 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

thousand  blossoms  open  at  once  and  the  sod 
beneath  innumerably  starred  with  others  al- 
ready fallen.  The  night  jasmine,  in  full  green, 
was  not  yet  in  blossom  but  it  was  visibly  think- 
ing of  the  spring.  The  Chinese  privet,  of  twenty 
feet  stature,  in  perennial  leaf,  was  saving  its 
flowers  for  May.  The  sea-green  oleander,  fif- 
teen feet  high  and  wide  (see  extreme  left 'fore- 
ground, page  176),  drooped  to  the  sward  on  four 
sides  but  hoarded  its  floral  cascade  for  June. 
The  evergreen  loquat  (locally  miscalled  the 
mespilus  plum)  was  already  faltering  into  bloom; 
also  the  orange,  with  its  flower-buds  among  its 
polished  leaves,  whitening  for  their  own  wed- 
ding; while  high  over  them  towered  the  date 
and  other  palms,  spired  the  cedar  and  arbor- 
vitae,  and  with  majestic  infrequency,  where 
grounds  were  ample,  spread  the  lofty  green, 
scintillating  boughs  of  the  magnolia  grandiflora 
(see  left  foregrounds  on  pages  174,  182  and  184), 
the  giant,  winter-bare  pecan  and  the  wide,  mossy 
arms  of  the  vast  live-oak. 

Now  while  the  time  of  year  in  which  these 
conditions    are    visible    heightens    their    lovely 

184 


'  Back  of  the  building-line  the  fences  .  .  .  generally  more  than  head-high 
.  .  .  are  sure  to  be  draped." 


".  .  .  from  the  autumn  side  of  Christmas  to  the  summer  side  of  Easter." 

In  any  garden  as  fair  as  this  there  should  he  some  place  to  sit  down.     This  deficiency  is 
one  of  the  commonest  faults  iu  American  gardening. 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

wonder,  their  practical  value  to  Northern  home- 
lovers  is  not  the  marvel  and  delight  of  some- 
thing inimitable  but  their  inspiring  suggestion 
of  what  may  be  done  with  ordinary  Northern 
home  grounds,  to  the  end  that  the  floral  pag- 
eantry of  the  Southern  January  may  be  fully 
rivalled  by  the  glory  of  the  Northern  June. 

For  of  course  the  Flora  of  the  North,  who 
in  the  winter  of  long  white  nights  puts  off  all 
her  jewelry  and  nearly  all  her  robes  and  "lies 
down  to  pleasant  dreams,"  is  the  blonde  sister 
of,  and  equal  heiress  with,  this  darker  one  who, 
in  undivested  greenery  and  flowered  trappings, 
persists  in  open-air  revelry  through  all  the 
months  from  the  autumn  side  of  Christmas  to 
the  summer  side  of  Easter.  Wherefore  it  seems 
to  me  the  Northern  householder's  first  step 
should  be  to  lay  hold  upon  this  New  Orleans 
idea  in  gardening  —  which  is  merely  by  adop- 
tion a  New  Orleans  idea,  while  through  and 
through,  except  where  now  and  then  its  votaries 
stoop  to  folly,  it  is  by  book  a  Northern  voice, 
the  garden  gospel  of  Frederick  Law  Olmsted. 

Wherever  American  homes  are  assembled  we 
185 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

may  have,  all  winter,  for  the  asking  —  if  we 
will  but  ask  ourselves  instead  of  the  lawn- 
mower  man  —  an  effect  of  home,  of  comfort, 
cheer  and  grace,  of  summer  and  autumn  remi- 
niscences and  of  spring's  anticipations,  immeas- 
urably better  than  any  ordinary  eye  or  fancy 
can  extort  from  the  rectangular  and  stiffened- 
out  nakedness  of  unplanted  boundaries;  im- 
measurably better  than  the  month-by-month 
daily  death-stare  of  shroud-like  snow  around 
houses  standing  barefooted  on  the  frozen  ground. 
It  may  be  by  hearty  choice  that  we  abide  where 
we  must  forego  outdoor  roses  in  Christmas 
week  and  broad-leaved  evergreens  blooming  at 
New  Year's,  Twelfth-night  or  Carnival.  Well 
and  good !  But  we  can  have  even  in  mid- 
January,  and  ought  to  allow  ourselves,  the  lawn- 
garden's  surviving  form  and  tranced  life  rather 
than  the  shrubless  lawn's  unmarked  grave 
flattened  beneath  the  void  of  the  snow.  We 
ought  to  retain  the  sleeping  beauty  of  the 
ordered  garden's  unlost  configuration,  with  the 
warm  house  for  its  bosom,  with  all  its  remoter 
contours  —  alleys,  bays,  bushy  networks  and 

186 


"  The  sleeping  beauty  of  the  garden's  unlost  configuration  .  .  .  keeping  a 
winter's  share  of  its  feminine  grace  and  softness." 


This   picture   was   taken   in   th< 


first  flush  of  spring. 
Japanese  cherry. 


The  trees  in  blossom  are  the  wild 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

sky-line  —  keeping  a  winter  share  of  their 
feminine  grace  and  softness.  We  ought  to  re- 
tain the  "frozen  music"  of  its  myriad  gray, 
red  and  yellow  stems  and  twigs  and  lingering 
blue  and  scarlet  berries  stirring,  though  leaf- 
lessly,  for  the  kiss  of  spring.  And  we  ought  to 
retain  the  invincible  green  of  cedars,  junipers 
and  box,  cypress,  laurel,  hemlock  spruce  and 
cloaking  ivy,  darkling  amid  and  above  these, 
receiving  from  and  giving  to  them  a  cheer  which 
neither  could  have  in  their  frostbound  Eden 
without  mutual  contrast. 

Eden !  If  I  so  recklessly  ignore  latitude  as 
to  borrow  the  name  of  the  first  gardener's 
garden  for  such  a  shivering  garden  as  this  it 
is  because  I  see  this  one  in  a  dream  of  hope  —  a 
diffident,  interrogating  hope  —  really  to  behold, 
some  day,  this  dream-garden  of  Northern  winters 
as  I  have  never  with  actual  open  eyes  found  one 
kept  by  any  merely  well-to-do  American  citizen. 
If  I  describe  it  I  must  preface  with  all  the  dis- 
claimers of  a  self-conscious  amateur  whose  most 
venturesome  argument  goes  no  farther  than 
"Why  not?"  yet  whom  the  evergreen  gardens 

187 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

of  New  Orleans  revisited  in  January  impel  to 
protest  against  every  needless  submission  to 
the  tyrannies  of  frost  and  of  a  gardening  art  — 
or  non-art,  a  submission  which  only  in  the  out- 
door embellishment  of  the  home  takes  winter 
supinely,  abjectly. 

This  garden  of  a  hope's  dream  covers  but 
three  ordinary  town  lots.  Often  it  shrinks  to 
but  one  without  asking  for  any  notable  change 
of  plan.  Following  all  the  lines,  the  hard,  law 
lines,  that  divide  it  from  its  neighbors  and  the 
street,  there  runs,  waist-high  on  its  street  front, 
shoulder-high  on  its  side  bounds,  a  close  ever- 
green hedge  of  hemlock  spruce.  In  its  young 
way  this  hedge  has  been  handsome  from  in- 
fancy; though  still  but  a  few  years  old  it  gives, 
the  twelvemonth  round,  a  note  both  virile  and 
refined  in  color,  texture  and  form,  and  if  the 
art  that  planted  it  and  the  care  that  keeps  it 
do  not  decay  neither  need  the  hedge  for  a  cen- 
tury to  come.  Against  the  intensest  cold  this 
side  of  Labrador  it  is  perfectly  hardy,  is 
trimmed  with  a  sloping  top  to  shed  snows 
whose  weight  might  mutilate  it,  and  can  be 

188 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

kept  in  repair  from  generation  to  generation, 
like  the  house's  plumbing  or  roof,  or  like  some 
green-uniformed  pet  regiment  with  ranks  yet 
.full  after  the  last  of  its  first  members  has  per- 
ished. 

Furthermore,  along  the  inner  side  of  this 
green  hedge  (sometimes  close  against  it,  some- 
times with  a  turfed  alley  between),  as  well  as 
all  round  about  the  house,  extend  borders  of  de- 
ciduous shrubs,  with  such  meandering  boundaries 
next  the  broad  white  lawn  as  the  present  writer, 
for  this  time,  has  probably  extolled  enough. 
These  bare,  gray  shrub  masses  are  not  wholly 
bare  or  gray  and  have  other  and  most  pleas- 
ingly visible  advantages  over  unplanted,  pallid 
vacancy,  others  besides  the  mere  lace-work  of 
their  twigs  and  the  occasional  tenderness  of  a 
last  summer's  bird's  nest.  Here  and  there, 
breaking  the  cold  monotone,  a  bush  of  moose 
maple  shows  the  white-streaked  green  of  its 
bare  stems  and  sprays,  or  cornus  or  willow  gives 
a  soft  glow  of  red,  purple  or  yellow.  Only 
here  and  there,  insists  my  dream,  lest  when 
winter  at  length  gives  way  to  the  "rosy  time 

189 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

of  the  year"  their  large  and  rustic  gentleness 
mar  the  nuptial  revels  of  summer's  returned 
aristocracy.  Because,  moreover,  there  is  a  far 
stronger  effect  of  life,  home  and  cheer  from 
the  broad-leaved  evergreens  which,  in  duly 
limited  numbers,  assemble  with  and  behind 
these,  and  from  the  lither  sorts  of  conifers  that 
spire  out  of  the  network  and  haze  of  living 
things  in  winter  sleep.  The  plantings  at  the 
garden's  and  dwelling's  front  being  properly,  of 
course,  lower  than  those  farther  back,  I  see 
among  them,  in  this  dream,  the  evergreen  box 
and  several  kinds  of  evergreen  ferns.  I  see  two 
or  three  species  of  evergreen  barberries,  not  to 
speak  of  Thunberg's  leafless  one  warm  red  with 
its  all-winter  berries,  the  winter  garden's  rubric. 
I  see  two  varieties  of  euonymus;  various  low 
junipers;  two  sorts  of  laurel;  two  of  andromeda, 
and  the  high-clambering  evergreen  ivy.  Be- 
ginning with  these  in  front,  infrequent  there 
but  multiplying  toward  the  place's  rear,  are 
bush  and  tree  forms  of  evergreen  holly,  native 
rhododendrons,  the  many  sorts  of  foreign  cedars 
and  our  native  ones  white  and  red,  their  sky- 

190 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

ward  lines  modified  as  the  square  or  pointed 
architecture  of  the  house  may  call  for  con- 
trasts in  pointed  or  broad-topped  arborescence. 
If,  at  times,  I  dream  behind  all  this  a  grove, 
with  now  and  then  one  of  its  broad,  steepling 
or  columnar  trees  pushed  forward  upon  the 
lawn,  it  is  only  there  that  I  see  anything  so 
stalwart  as  a  pine  or  so  rigid  as  a  spruce. 

Such  is  the  vision,  and  if  I  never  see  it  with 
open  eyes  and  in  real  sunlight,  even  as  a  dream 
it  is  —  like  certain  other  things  of  less  dignity 
—  grateful,  comforting.  I  warrant  there  are 
mistakes  in  it,  but  you  will  find  mistakes  wher- 
ever you  find  achievement,  and  there  is  no  law 
against  them  —  in  well-meant  dreams.  Ob- 
serve, if  you  please,  this  vision  lays  no  draw- 
back on  the  garden's  summer  beauty  and 
affluence.  Twelve  months  of  the  year  it  en- 
hances its  dignity  and  elegance.  Both  the 
numerical  proportions  of  evergreens  to  other 
greens,  and  the  scheme  of  their  distribution, 
are  quite  as  correct  and  effective  for  contrast 
and  background  to  the  transient  foliage  and 
countless  flowers  of  July  as  amid  the  bare 

191 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

ramage  of  January.  Summer  and  winter  alike, 
the  gravest  items  among  them  all,  the  conifers, 
retain  their  values  even  in  those  New  Orleans 
gardens.  When  we  remember  that  in  New 
England  and  on  all  its  isotherm  it  is  winter  all 
that  half  of  the  year  when  most  of  us  are  at 
home,  why  should  we  not  seek  to  realize  this 
snow-garden  dream?  Even  a  partial  or  faulty 
achievement  of  it  will  surely  look  lovelier  than 
the  naked  house  left  out  on  its  naked  white 
lawn  like  an  unclaimed  trunk  on  a  way-station 
platform.  I  would  not,  for  anything,  offend 
the  reader's  dignity,  but  I  must  think  that  this 
midwinter  garden  may  be  made  at  least  as 
much  lovelier  than  no  garden  as  Alice's  Cheshire 
cat  was  lovelier  —  with  or  without  its  grin  — 
than  the  grin  without  the  cat. 

Shall  we  summarize?  Our  gist  is  this:  that 
those  gardens  of  New  Orleans  are  as  they  are, 
not  by  mere  advantage  of  climate  but  for 
several  other  reasons.  Their  bounds  of  owner- 
ship and  privacy  are  enclosed  in  hedges,  tight 
or  loose,  or  in  vine-clad  fences  or  walls.  The 
lawn  is  regarded  as  a  ruling  feature  of  the  home's 

192 


i 


-  e* 

S5         CS 

•£    £ 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

visage,  but  not  as  its  whole  countenance  — 
one  flat  feature  never  yet  made  a  lovely  face. 
This  lawn  feature  is  beautified  and  magnified 
by  keeping  it  open  from  shrub  border  to  shrub 
border,  saving  it,  above  all  things,  from  the 
gaudy  barbarism  of  pattern-bedding;  and  by 
giving  it  swing  and  sweep  of  graceful  con- 
tours. And  lastly,  all  ground  lines  of  the  house 
are  clothed  with  shrubberies  whose  deciduous 
growths  are  companioned  with  broad-leafed 
evergreens  and  varied  conifers,  in  whatever 
proportions  will  secure  the  best  midwinter 
effects  without  such  abatement  to  those  of 
summer  as  would  diminish  the  total  of  the 
whole  year's  joy. 

These  are  things  that  can  be  done  anywhere 
in  our  land,  and  wherever  done  with  due  re- 
gard to  soil  as  well  as  to  climate  will  give  us 
gardens  worthy  to  be  named  with  those  of 
New  Orleans,  if  not,  in  some  aspects  and  at 
particular  times  of  the  year,  excelling  them. 
As  long  as  mistakes  are  made  in  the  architec- 
ture of  houses  they  will  be  made  in  the  architec- 
ture of  gardening,  and  New  Orleans  herself,  by 

193 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

a  little  more  care  for  the  fundamentals  of  art, 
of  all  art,  could  easily  surpass  her  present  floral 
charm.  Yet  in  her  gardens  there  is  one  further 
point  calling  for  approval  and  imitation:  the 
very  high  trimming  of  the  stems  of  lofty  trees. 
Here  many  a  reader  will  feel  a  start  of  resent- 
ment; but  in  the  name  of  the  exceptional 
beauty  one  may  there  see  resulting  from  the 
practice  let  us  allow  the  idea  a  moment's  enter- 
tainment, put  argument  aside  and  consider  a 
concrete  instance  whose  description  shall  be 
our  closing  word. 

Across  the  street  in  which,  that  January,  we 
sojourned  (we  were  two),  there  was  a  piece  of 
ground  of  an  ordinary  town  square's  length  and 
somewhat  less  breadth.  It  had  been  a  private 
garden.  Its  owner  had  given  it  to  the  city. 
Along  its  broad  side,  which  our  windows  looked 
out  upon,  stood  perfectly  straight  and  upright 
across  the  sky  to  the  south  of  them  a  row  of 
magnolias  (grandiflora)  at  least  sixty  feet  high, 
with  their  boles,  as  smooth  as  the  beach, 
trimmed  bare  for  two-thirds  of  their  stature. 
The  really  decorative  marks  of  the  trimming 

194 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

had  been  so  many  years,  so  many  decades, 
healed  as  to  show  that  no  harm  had  come  of 
it  or  would  come.  The  soaring,  dark-green,  glit- 
tering foliage  stood  out  against  the  almost  per- 
petually blue  and  white  sky.  Beyond  them,  a 
few  yards  within  the  place  but  not  in  a  straight 
line,  rose  even  higher  a  number  of  old  cedars 
similarly  treated  and  offering  a  pleasing  con- 
trast to  the  magnolias  by  the  feathery  texture 
of  their  dense  sprays  and  the  very  different  cast 
of  their  lack-lustre  green.  Overtopping  all,  on 
the  farther  line  of  the  grounds,  southern  line, 
several  pecan-trees  of  nearly  a  hundred  feet  in 
height,  leafless,  with  a  multitude  of  broad- 
spreading  boughs  all  high  in  air  by  natural 
habit,  gave  an  effect  strongly  like  that  of  winter 
elms,  though  much  enlivened  by  the  near  com- 
pany of  the  evergreen  masses  of  cedar  and 
magnolia.  These  made  the  upper-air  half  of 
the  garden,  the  other  half  being  assembled  be- 
low. For  the  lofty  trim  of  the  wintergreen- 
trees  —  the  beauty  of  which  may  have  been 
learned  from  the  palms  —  allowed  and  invited 
another  planting  beneath  them.  Magnolias, 

195 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

when  permitted  to  branch  low,  are,  to  under- 
growth, among  the  most  inhospitable  of  trees, 
but  in  this  garden,  where  the  sunlight  and  the 
breezes  passed  abundantly  under  such  high- 
lifted  arms  and  among  such  clean,  bare  stems,  a 
congregation  of  shrubs,  undershrubs  and  plants 
of  every  stature  and  breadth,  arose,  flourished 
and  flowered  without  stint.  Yonder  the  wind- 
split,  fathom-long  leaves  of  the  banana,  bright- 
ening the  background,  arched  upward,  drooped 
again  and  faintly  oscillated  to  the  air's  caress. 
Here  bloomed  and  smelled  the  delicate  magnolia 
fuscata,  and  here,  redder  with  flowers  than  green 
with  shining  leaves,  shone  the  camellia.  Here 
spread  the  dark  oleander,  the  pittosporum  and 
the  Chinese  privet;  and  here  were  the  camphor- 
tree  and  the  slender  sweet  olive  —  we  have 
named  them  all  before  and  our  steps  should 
not  take  us  over  the  same  ground  twice  in  one 
circuit;  that  would  be  bad  gardening.  But 
there  they  were,  under  those  ordinarily  so  in- 
tolerant trees,  prospering  and  singing  praises 
with  them,  some  in  full  blossom  and  perfume, 
some  waiting  their  turn,  like  parts  of  a  choir. 

196 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

In  the  midst  of  all,  where  a  broad  path  eddied 
quite  round  an  irregular  open  space,  and  that 
tender  quaintness  of  decay  appeared  which  is 
the  unfailing  New  Orleans  touch,  the  space  was 
filled  with  roses.  This  spot  was  lovely  enough 
by  day  and  not  less  so  for  being  a  haunt 
of  toddling  babes  and  their  nurses;  but  at 
night —  !  Regularly  at  evening  there  comes 
into  the  New  Orleans  air,  from  Heaven  knows 
whither,  not  a  mist,  not  a  fog  nor  a  dampness, 
but  a  soft,  transparent,  poetical  dimness  that 
in  no  wise  shortens  the  range  of  vision  —  a 
counterpart  of  that  condition  which  so  many 
thousands  of  favored  travellers  in  other  longi- 
tudes know  as  the  "Atlantic  haze."  One  night 
-  oh,  oftener  than  that,  but  let  us  say  one  for 
the  value  of  understatement  —  returning  to  our 
quarters  some  time  before  midnight,  we  stepped 
out  upon  the  balcony  to  gaze  across  into  that 
garden.  The  sky  was  clear,  the  neighborhood 
silent.  A  wind  stirred,  but  the  shrubberies 
stood  motionless.  The  moon,  nearly  full,  swung 
directly  before  us,  pouring  its  gracious  light 
through  the  tenuous  cross-hatchings  of  the 

197 


THE    AMATEUR    GARDEN 

pecans,  nestling  it  in  the  dense  tops  of  the  cedars 
and  magnolias  and  sprinkling  it  to  the  ground 
among  the  lower  growths  and  between  their 
green-black  shadows.  When  in  a  certain  im- 
potence of  rapture  we  cast  about  in  our  minds 
for  an  adequate  comparison  —  where  descrip- 
tion in  words  seemed  impossible  —  the  only 
parallel  we  could  find  was  the  art  of  Corot  and 
such  masters  from  the  lands  where  the  wonder- 
ful pictorial  value  of  trees  trimmed  high  has 
been  known  for  centuries  and  is  still  cherished. 
For  without  those  trees  so  disciplined  the  ravish- 
ing picture  of  that  garden  would  have  been 
impossible. 

Of  course  our  Northern  gardens  cannot  smile 
like  that  in  winter.  But  they  need  not  perish, 
as  tens  of  thousands  of  lawn-mower,  pattern- 
bed,  so-called  gardens  do.  They  should  but 
hibernate,  as  snugly  as  the  bear,  the  squirrel, 
the  bee;  and  who  that  ever  in  full  health  of 
mind  and  body  saw  spring  come  back  to  a 
Northern  garden  of  blossoming  trees,  shrubs 
and  undershrubs  has  not  rejoiced  in  a  year  of 
four  clear-cut  seasons?  Or  who  that  ever  saw 

198 


MIDWINTER    GARDENS 

mating  birds,  greening  swards,  starting  vio- 
lets and  all  the  early  flowers  loved  of  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  Shelley,  Bryant  and  Tennyson, 
has  not  felt  that  the  resurrection  of  landscape 
and  garden  owes  at  least  half  its  glory  to  the 
long  trance  of  winter,  and  wished  that  dwellers 
in  Creole  lands  might  see  New  England's  First 
of  June?  For  what  says  the  brave  old  song- 
couplet  of  New  England's  mothers  ?  That  — 

"Spring  would  be  but  wintry  weather 
If  we  had  nothing  else  but  spring." 

Every  year,  even  in  Massachusetts — even  in 
Michigan — spring,  summer,  and  autumn  are 
sure  to  come  overladen  with  their  gifts  and 
make  us  a  good,  long,  merry  visit.  All  the 
other  enlightened  and  well-to-do  nations  of  the 
world  entertain  them  with  the  gardening  art 
and  its  joys  and  so  make  fairer,  richer  and 
stronger  than  can  be  made  indoors  alone  the 
individual  soul,  the  family,  the  social,  the  civic, 
the  national  life.  In  this  small  matter  we 
Americans  are  at  the  wrong  end  of  the  proces- 
sion. What  shall  we  do  about  it  ? 


199 


RETURN     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 
TQ-—»  J202  Main  Librar- 
LOAN  PERIOD  T 
HOME  USE 


ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 


s  prior  to  due  d 


Renewals  and  recharges  mav  he 

ni  IF  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORi 
FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m,  1  /83         BERKELEY,  CA  94> 


ii 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


